Lost and Found

This week Bad Origins was released and is now available online. It was exciting to see the book finally out, with reviews. I don’t have many readers but the readers I do have are amazing. They are loyal, kind, and supportive in so many ways. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to all of them. There is always excitement when you release your latest book. When you first are setting up the release date and uploading your manuscript, you have a nervous feeling in your stomach. Okay for me, it’s more than a nervous feeling, I actually want to vomit because I’m scared I haven’t done justice to the series. I’m sure not all authors feel that way but I always do. Once the book releases, the nerves lessen and the excitement is builds. There was also another feeling with the release of this book. It was the feeling of accomplishment but on a completely different level. I have talked recently about what I am going through. The release of Bad Origins feels in some ways like a new start for me. It’s almost as if I am washing away the bad and I am heading towards a better future. Maybe it is because I have finally reached a point that I am starting to be me again. I have spent the last year and a half finding me and now I am finally embracing it. Maybe it’s because I feel like the weight is lighter on my shoulders. Or maybe it was because I decided to change the ending of the book. The original ending to Bad Origins gave us a bit of foreshadowing for the future of the series and what was to come. I decided to change it, moving the last chapter to the beginning of book four, Bad Intentions. I gave Bad Origins a happy ending. Maybe that happy ending was the reason I am feeling more accomplished.

With that accomplishment I am beginning to feel like me. As I said, I am embracing who I am. I am beginning to dress the way I want to, do what I want to do, and just enjoy life. This past week, I have been writing more and not just within the series but my poetry also. I am diving into more poetry than I really thought I could. The thing is, I am finding there is something enjoyable about poetry, that I have never found until now.

I feel the first few chapters of book six have no heart. I have felt that way for weeks now. As I continue on this journey to being me once more, I can see the issues that I need to fix in the first edit of the book. I can tell that the chapters I have been working on over the last two week are better. For a while I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to be able to finish the series. It scared me to think that my writing career had just started and was now going to come to a crashing halt. I was really starting to think that maybe I should give it up. It has been something I have been battling for weeks. Savannah and crew have been silent and I thought they had left me. I am finally starting to like an author again instead of a fraud. Savannah started talking to me again once I started accepting certain things in my life I can’t change or have control over.

I am also starting to think more about the other series that I am wanting to write. I am starting to think about what that world will look like. What each of the brothers will be like. It is an exciting prospect and one that I have not thought about much in the past two months.

I am also beginning to find my love of reading once more. I talked about that last week, how sometimes our feelings and life get in the way of what we enjoy. Reading as of late has been difficult to do. I have not had the focus or the desire to read about love. I have just started reading one of my good friend’s books. I am reading everyday, just as I used to do months ago. I am hoping this is the start of a new chapter in my life.

Sometimes we need to take a time out from life in order to find who we are. We all have things that we are passionate about but when we are in the middle of a transition sometimes even those passions have to be placed on hold. I never stopped writing through this difficult period but I definitely didn’t do my best writing. In many ways it felt like I was new to writing or that I was broken. Maybe in some ways I was. I needed the time to heal the damage I had inflicted upon myself. I also had to heal the damage caused by others. Until I did that, my art and every part of my life would be affected. I am not entirely whole but I am getting there, I am better than I was. I believe everyone at one time or another goes through transitions, good or bad. It is in many ways how we grow as a human.

So take the time you need to heal yourself. Make the effort to better yourself whenever you can. Have the courage to take the steps you need in order to heal. Do what you know is right for you, don’t let anyone change you. Stay strong. Until next time!