I've never really blogged before. I've read plenty of them. Natch. I've thought about them. Of course. But up until this month I never thought I had anything interesting enough to say on any particular subject. Maybe I still don't, but what the hell. Blogging tools are so easy to use now that I just can't resist.
I've been publishing ebook romances on Amazon and Smashwords now for around three months and it has been an AWESOME experience. A friend of a friend started doing it and was making a pretty good job of it (why not? she's a good writer) and so I thought... I can do this. Can't I? Turns out the answer was yes but boy has it been a learning experience.
I write a lot of different genres with varying amounts of enthusiasm. Has this stopped me from making it in any one particular one? Probably. I scored a three book deal back in 2004 for a young adult fantasy series with Pan Mac and I thought all my dreams had come true. As it turns out, a few of them did but as most writers know, dreams often start with the publishing deal and end with the bit that comes after - hard sales, promotion and follow up. And while working with Pan was a great experience, one which I might have capitalized on it if I'd written more YA, perversely, I didn't want to. I had other stories in mind. In hindsight I might have tried to follow that road but I didn't have any other YA books in me at the time.
Instead I was all about the urban fantasy and romance. I love romance. Ever since I was eleven when I used to hole up behind a chair (where my brother couldn't bug me) and disappear into Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer. Oh, and Victoria Holt. And Phillipa Gregory and Susan Howatch and... well, you get the picture. Romance and me, we were made for each other. I figured I could maybe get my urban fantasy published in the traditional manner but I wasn't so sure about the romance so I decided to venture into epubbing.
Three months - and twelve thousand sales later - I'm mighty glad I did and not just because I figure I can give up my day gig if I continue on with it. By actually focusing on my Regency romances (of all things) I have fallen in love with the genre once more. I started off with short stories (The Rake's Midnight Lady and Milord's Highland Captive - written for the Harlequin Undone series) and continued on with novellas. And as I've gone along, each of them has grown in word length. The last one - Lady Libertine - hit the thirty-four thousand words. I'm currently writing my next one which will be novel length and I have more novels planned, purely because it's so much fun to write them, to plot them, to have a fun with my characters. It has been brilliant.
A lot is being written about e-publishing and a great deal more will come because it is an industry in revolution, much like the music scene fifteen years ago. Everything is changing. We don't need to go to the bookstore any more (if you can find one) because books can be bought with a click of a key. Which is lovely for me, even while I might be grieving for the good old days. Or some aspects of it. But this journey has been fascinating, with so many helpful people giving such useful, unselfish advice. The Twitter people, with their little URL gems that lead to oceans of information. The Independent Author Network, the bloggers, the book reviewers, the other writers. All generous, helpful people. It is an expanding industry and I, like many others, hope to expand with it.
