Why do we write? By Felice Stevens

     Of all questions I'm ever asked, one of the first is "What made you want to write?"
     I can't honestly say there is any one thing. I knew from when I was young I loved to tell stories. My favorite one was about two girls, Rima and Charity who had magical powers and fought dragons and all the bad guys. My best friend and I would act out scenarios and I'd write them down.

     Now that I'm entering my 5th (!!!) year of being a published author, I can say that the answer to what makes me write is that I have stories inside my head and I want to tell them. 

     What writing isn't for me, though, is seeing what's the hot trend and jumping on it. That's called "writing to market." Someone in a professional loop I belong to stated that writing to market is simply writing what readers want to read. Ehhh, I'm not so sure I agree with that. Often, I don't know what I want to read until I pick up that blurb and am entranced enough to start reading the first few pages. 

     I don't ever write a book because a particular "trope" is hot. For those who don't know, a trope is a literary device or a theme, like forced proximity, daddy-books, friends to lovers. And please for the love of all things bright and beautiful, PLEASE stop saying that MM is a trope. Being LGBTQA is NOT a trope. It is a person's LIFE.

     But I digress. I could never write to what's hot in the market because I don't craft my characters' stories around a hot trope. An idea will come to me and then I sit with the characters and their lives start to come to me. Or I brainstorm with my close friend and we go back and forth about what the characters' hopes and dreams are and what the black moment is....that kind of stuff. World building. Story building. Creating a character arc. 

     My characters start with an idea in my head but they come from my heart. They do not come from a fill in the blank template of how to write the next big thing. I belong to an on-line forum where this is a major discussion point. What's going to be hot? Does anyone have a plot template to write these stories? And there are links to actual templates where it's discussed when the first kiss should happen, in what chapter the first sex scene should occur...

     And it makes me sad because where is the creative love for writing? Where are those moments where your fingers fly over the keyboard because the dam has broken and the words can't come fast enough? (Answer-those moments don't come often.)

     Every book I've written has a personal meaning to me. My characters take me on a journey and I hope they do the same for the reader. People laugh at me when I say I love my characters but they become a part of me when I write them. They aren't simply another cookie in the assembly line I push out, to get the next one done. Do I want to make money? Of course I do. But I can't and won't push out a story simply because it's the flavor of the month. 

     You might say, "But Felice, you write so fast. You have so many releases I can't keep up." Lucky me, I have ideas. Are there stories I wish I could write? Yes of course. (John the bartender from Rescued—I'm looking at you but you're not talking to me. I'm waiting. I'll be here for you.) But if the emotional connection to the character isn't there, then I can't force it. 
     
     So I'll never write to market. Maybe if I did, I'd sell better. But one thing writing has proven to me is to be true to myself and who I am. I'm ALWAYS going to be that writer whose guys are super swoony. They will always be a little bit frustrating: they will have misunderstandings and not say the right thing and screw up or cut off communication. It's called life and that's real. They will always be hot as hell because I love writing the emotion that comes with sex. And of course they will ALWAYS have that Happily Ever After. But what they won't be is the trend. The hot thing everyone might be writing now. They'll be who they are because that's the only way I know how.

Here comes the part where I can tell you about what's new and upcoming:

Audiobooks
Second to None is out! Charlie David wraps up my Breakfast Club series with the audio of Marcus and Tyler and it is EVERYTHING!


You can find it on Audible:  SECOND TO NONE
     








First Light, my second collaboration with Christina Lee is now on audiobook with a dual narration of Kale Williams and Michael Pauley. They knocked this one out of the park and into the next time zone.  
You can find in on Audible here: FIRST LIGHT

Have you added Broken Silence to your Goodreads shelf? It's coming soon! The cover is to die for and this might be one of my most romantic books yet. A troubled student discovers an outlet for his pain in writing poems but the attraction to his professor is something he can't ignore. You can add to Goodreads: BROKEN SILENCE