Sara Winters's Blog: the fascinating life of the introverted writer

I need to vent here for a few minutes. With all the technological advances that allow us to prevent children getting their hands on material that is not age appropriate, why do people insist on censoring what adults are allowed to read? I don’t mean subjects like rape for tittilation or child sex – they’re taboo for a reason and a lot of publishers (and writers) won’t touch them. But consensual sex between adults is still treated like it’s dirty and shameful.

I could get into a long, rambling rant about my feelings on the subject, but that’s not on the agenda today. I just wanted to point out that some of the services who make money from this material are full of it. I have two examples from yesterday. Those of you who have read my work (or had even one conversation with me) know there is sex in my stories. All of them. The level of explicitness doesn’t change whether I’m writing a sweet love story or an erotic short, because that’s my writing style. I believe the way I write consenting adults is tasteful.

Here’s my issue. I was informed that a merchant won’t sell a story of mine because it contains sexual material. There was another comment about the description of the same story – it’s too explicit. The reason I was and am still irritated is because ALL OF MY BOOKS HAVE SEX IN THEM. This story wasn’t singled out because it’s the only one I have with adult content, it was singled out because it was appropriately tagged as erotica. Not erotic romance, not romance, not mature literature or whatever other false descriptor I might use. A computer program scanned my story for specific words and sent up a flag. Funny, because I use those same words (body parts, positions, etc.) in all of my work. But they’re only bad (dirty/vulgar/inappropriate) when the story is labelled erotica. And my book was only scanned because I put it into the correct category, otherwise they would have rejected all of my work. My choices are to deliberately miscategorize my book (which could get my publishing account cancelled), censor my story (hell no), or call them out on their hypocrisy and/or pull my stories from this distributor.

Here’s where it really gets fun. The two merchants in question have accepted the romance and erotic romance stories I’ve submitted. All the up against the wall, in the shower, beg for it on their knees action is apparently fine if I say it’s romance. (I have to stop rolling my eyes or I may pull something). But labelling stories as romance just to get past a gatekeeper is not an option for me. I don’t have one ounce of shame over what I write. And these stores are happy to make money from it.

Note: I have no way of knowing if the trigger to scan my story was merely because it was labelled erotica, or because it’s gay erotica.

And yes, I’m aware merchants have the right to sell or not sell whatever they please. And distributors (like Draft2Digital and Smashwords) have to go along with whatever the merchant tells them. But arbitrarily applying the rules isn’t fair to anyone. They’re not rules if they’re not consistent. They’re just an excuse to censor.

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Wait. Stop. I had been prepared to post this when I decided to read the terms of service and look around both sites. The first merchant has all of the items they sell hidden (it’s a subscription service), and this is in their terms of service:

Broad. By those rules, nothing with material more salacious than a kiss should be allowed. Also “otherwise inappropriate as determined by us” gives them a license to discriminate against whatever they want without a solid reason. Remember when I said all of my stories have sexual content and the same level of explicitness?

The second merchant didn’t have anything against sexual material in the ToS. They even have an erotica section. Went there, browsed for a few seconds and found this book listed at the top of the page:

Yeah. That was acceptable while my book description was too explicit:

“There’s no point beating around the bush. I like it rough. Hard enough to bring tears to my eyes and long enough I forget everything but how good it feels. Tonight I’m ready for a new playmate. When my eyes met his across the bar, I knew I was in for the ride of my life.”

Perhaps I should publish with the company that got that other story past the gatekeepers.

Also of note is that the second merchant allows you to browse their catalog without being signed in. So, someone could read about this guy’s wife being pounded or the other one I saw about a professor bending over a student without an account. Oh, but the book covers are blurred out, so I guess that makes it okay. Good to know they have some standards.

Tl;dr: my issue here is with the distributor sending my books to these stores applying their rules inconsistently and the merchants who accept or reject books on a whim, not a solid set of standards.

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Edited to add:

After the initial post, I went through my emails again to look at exact wording before writing to the distributor. Several of my erotica stories were labelled as  “rejected” by the first merchant in my account on the distributor’s website, but the emails from the distributor state they never sent the stories in question. I edited the above post to reflect that several stories were in question, not just the one I was using as an example.

Is there anything worse than imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome accompanied by anxiety and depression that existed on their own before I began writing.

Let me clarify here: I mean before I began writing with the intent to publish.

Scrawling bad poetry in high school and short stories for my friends to read never contributed to sleepless nights or worries about my reputation. Sharing my work (and charging money) is what takes writing from a pleasurable outlet to an anxiety-producing sinkhole. So why do I write? It’s simple. I can’t not do it. It’s who I am. Maybe it’s an issue that I can’t see myself as anything other than a writer, even if it’s been years since I’ve published anything. But publishing isn’t what authenticates my writing credentials, even if it feels that way sometimes. Putting my heart and soul on the page, even on the days when I struggle to produce so much as a sentence does that. I just wish it was easier to push aside the ever-present doubts and do the thing.

More than anything, my inability to produce anything the last few years has been me getting in my own way – not a lack of ideas or time to write. Lack of focus multiplied with crippling anxiety. The two feed into one another, creating a cycle where I am making myself feel guilty for not producing, trying to force it, then worried that forcing it will produce substandard work, then going out of my to way procrastinate so I don’t have to do the thing that will inevitably fail. It’s enough to make me scream.

My struggle isn’t unique. Or an excuse. It’s simply a part of my daily reality. Some days I can work through it. More often than not I can’t.

A good example of this is a book I’m currently working on. It took a lot for me to ask for my rights back from my previous publisher (anxiety through the roof), then a couple of years before I reread it so I could see what changes needed to be made. See, because of my unpleasant experience with the publisher, I’d spent years convincing myself the book was barely readable and I was a no-talent hack too in love with my own words to be objective about it. Some version of that has been going through my head in relation to this book since 2011. That’s a lot of self-doubt to work through. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot of support from friends, fellow writers and readers since, but nothing shakes me like someone being indifferent about my work. Finally, I sat down and did major rewrites on the story. Fell in love with it all over again. Got myself ready to work on the cover in November and personal issues threw me way off. Between that and a return of the anxiety, I’ve been fighting against the worst parts of myself to get this thing done.

There is nothing wrong with this book. I fixed the things I didn’t like about the original version, enhanced and cleaned up areas that needed it and reintroduced content that had been previously cut. But I haven’t been able to force myself to finish the cover and get out review copies. I had been reading this book and I’d set a release date (January 8, 2018) and planned a whole promo strategy to give my baby a proper send off.

But I’m still getting in my own way. My date has come and gone, my plans for the cover have taken shape – twice – and I have yet to complete any one thing. I just need a few days when the version of me who wants this book out in the world again is louder than the voice of doubt. The problem is I don’t know when that will be. I can only hope it’s soon. I want to feel like a real writer again. Even if publishing only authenticates it for other people.

Crud.

I’ve been working on this game idea for a while now. I believed I wouldn’t be able to make it for years because I want to do a 3D animated version of it and I don’t quite have the resources yet. Not even close to ready to crowdsource what I need. Yet…I’m playing (okay, failing at) a game that has a play style I can adapt for my game idea.

Now I have no idea if I should continue writing and coding the game and worry about getting someone to design the final graphics later or finish my stack of incomplete novellas and shorts before letting myself get distracted by another project. The problem is, this is tempting. And possibly doable within a few months or so.

I don’t want to add this to the list of things I’m currently working on. Because that list is long. (Yes, I know I need to update my website’s list of current projects.) But this game idea is so shiny!

I had started working on a demo a few weeks ago then gave up on it because I didn’t think it was worth my time. I mean, why do a 2D version of a 3D game just for the sake of practice? I know how to code a 2D game. Well, a visual novel, at least. But now, with this other game as an example, I see other possibilities. Maybe I can do the 2D version and then release the 3D version with extended content and on multiple platforms. That’s a worthy goal to work towards.

In the meantime, I have four novellas or shorts planned under three different pseudonyms, a novel rerelease, a lot going on in my personal life and at least one more nonfiction book to join the formatting book I published recently. So yeah, I need another project. I’ll feel positively bored without one.

I was reminded recently of something my friend Kiracee once said:

I’ve felt so guilty over not having time to write that I’ve been avoiding goodreads, as if I don’t deserve to spend time with other writers when I’m too busy to write. Ridiculous. You’d think I would know better at my age.

And, after all these years of trying, I still have nothing to show for it but a hard drive littered with partially finished stories and a mountain of guilt.

I’m pretty sure guilt is a part of the writing package. Unless you’re Stephen King, who writes like his life depends on it. Love the man, but he’s an unnatural standard to live up to.

That’s why I post articles in my writing group about letting yourself off the hook every once in a while. In between all the stuff about improving technique and telling a good story, we all have to work on self care. Sometimes self care is binge watching a good TV show with our favorite junk food. Sometimes it’s taking care of everyday life so when we do have time to write, we don’t have a dozen other things distracting us from our main focus.

And trust me when I tell you many of us have unfinished business lurking in drawers or on flash drives somewhere. I like to think mine will be completed one day, even if they’re never published. But all stories are stepping stones. They’re all a part of the journey we take to become the best writers we can become. And since we’re always striving to be better, every once in a while, you have to let yourself acknowledge the difference between a story that’s going to take more time to write and one that’s merely there to help you get better for the one you’re going to complete. Some of our ideas just aren’t meant to be completed stories. And it’s okay. I’ve done everything from completing a short story in five hours to writing a novella over the course of a year and a half (Envy), to writing 7,000 words on my best day. There are good and bad days and months and years. The important thing is to keep learning and growing.

One thing that might help you is to look at something you wrote years ago, even just a couple of years, and compare how much your writing has grown in the meantime. Sometimes I do that to remind myself how much progress I’ve made – especially on days when I feel like I’m not making any at all. I promise all the stress and tears are worth it. Just take care of yourself and the writing will fall into place.

You ever get so excited when you get an idea for a shiny new project that you can barely contain it? I get like that every once in a while, especially when it involves a new way to tell a story. Last summer, I began exploring video game creation – in particular, visual novels. Choose Your Adventure Stories were fun when I was a kid and the adult game versions I’ve come across in the last few months have been fascinating in their complexity. I even made a test game with a friend’s story just to play with the Renpy software and it was a lot of fun.

Then I realized I wouldn’t be able to tell the story I wanted to tell. I have little in the way of art skills and even less in the way of budget. So much sadface. I got a drawing app for my tablet. Results were…uninspiring. A few months go by and my friend Christopher keeps sending me links about game writing jobs (he’s subtle, that one) before he finally sent me one that’s proven helpful. The last few months I’ve been doing an online game writing workshop.

OMG, the ideas I’ve been getting. Some of them new, many of them expansions on ideas I’d put aside to work on later. Many links and tutorials later, I stumbled across some people recommending Blender software for 3D design and animation. I’m in love. Also, I’m so over my head.

Last week I gave serious thought to producing my own 3D game, not just the visual novels I’ve been planning. Great, but it may not be practical. (Designing or crowd funding all of the characters, levels, music, effects, and coding could take years on my own.) Baby steps, though. I’m learning the parts of the software I’ll need one section at a time and how to adapt to the programs controls on a laptop without a mouse. It’s a little slow-going, but I’ll get there.

In the meantime, I can use the program to produce 2D art, so I may actually be able to solve my content issues with visual novels.

I think my first big project with Blender will be a movie, no more than 10 minutes or so. I already have a story in mind. All I have to do is master the software. Easy, right? Thank goodness for tutorials.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a post along these lines for some time now. Mostly so I could talk about how Amazon has affected the publishing industry, but at least in part to explain why I do what I do.

After the events of the last few weeks, I’m not sure where I stand on that. This fall makes ten years since I began self-publishing. My first book was a short story anthology for an erotica website. I ran the site’s online bookstore at lulu.com. I also helped with proofreading short stories, novellas and online serials for the main site.

Over the years, I’ve published (either directly online or through a publishing platform like Smashwords) well over 300 stories of various lengths, the vast majority of which were my own. If you’re wondering why I don’t have 200 some-odd stories listed in my bibliography, the answer is simple. Not all of it was original fiction.

Before anyone asks, I am proud of my fanfiction roots. I had direct contact with my audience on a daily basis, immediate feedback and learned many different ways to craft a story with varying results. I suppose if I really want to count my fanfic as part of my pubbing experience, I began in spring of 2000.

Either way one chooses to look at it, I’ve been doing this for quite a while. When I decided I wanted to charge people for my services, I thought word of mouth might be enough to sustain my efforts. I had hoped, albeit foolishly, that talking to people about what I do would be enough to garner interest, and then business. Next step, profit!

Nothing is that simple. At least, not for me. I’ve taken part in discussions with authors from time to time, but one of the more eye-opening ones was last night on Facebook. I asked a simple question: do self-published authors feel services (editing, formatting, book cover art) are worth more if the person charges above a certain amount? The answers varied by respondant, but quite a number of people said or implied that price, to them, is at least partically indicative of quality. Maybe I’m overstating the consensus (it’s early and my caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet). I felt…gutted is too strong a word. I felt the wind go out of my sails.

See, I have two issues. The first, I have the kind of experience that isn’t readily quantifiable. The website I used to work for no longer exists, so I can’t use that as a reference point. And saying I’ve published my own work doesn’t impress many. I could probably scrounge through old emails and find every author I’ve beta read or done other work for (there are dozens), but asking for testimonials seems like begging them to help me get noticed. Because there are tons of editors, proofreaders and formatters out there, I feel like my voice is getting lost in the crowd. I’m proud of my work, but I don’t want to beat people over the head with constant self-promotion.

The other issue is that I deliberately underpriced my services because I know how expensive self-publishing can be. I want to be able to help people who are like me – not a ton of disposable income, short story writers – and people just starting out. My idea was that I could help bring good stories to market, rather than let them remain unseen because the author couldn’t afford to invest hundreds or thousands before publication. Not everyone is able to do crowdfunding or save up the money to invest in this kind of thing.

And I know some people (authors, publishers and readers) feel like if an author’s story is worth it, they’ll find a way to come up with the money. The thing is, we all feel like our babies our worth anything we can give them. Some of us just aren’t in a place where we can justify spending that kind of money. (Frankly, if I could raise a few hundred dollars just like that, I’d use it to pay my debts. My stories would get out there any way I could manage.)

Where am I going with this? I’ve recognized for quite some time that my ideas about helping the little guy were romantic. Altruistic, yes, but at least partly based on an ideal world where my greater reward would be helping people who needed it. And I have helped a number of authors.

Unfortunately, I’m not in a place where I can do it the same way anymore. I love working with other authors. I genuinely enjoy editing and formatting books, whether mine or other people’s. But I’m faced with a choice. I can charge more, so that people who feel like these services need to be more expensive will see value in what I do. That, in turn, would limit the choices of authors who don’t have that kind of budget. Or I can stop doing this altogether. This is the most likely, as I can’t afford to keep putting myself out there if the impression a number of people have is that my services aren’t worth their time and money. Perhaps I’ve gone about promoting myself the wrong way. Either way, by the end of the month I’m either going to pare down my website or close it altogether. I wish I had a better solution for this problem.

I think my Facebook post last night allowed me to confirm something I already knew: Perceived value can make or break a product. I used to believe that only applied to the books once they hit market. Now I know better.

I haven’t been much for meditation the past few years. I find it difficult to concentrate. Funny, how something that used to be so easy, nearly effortless, can feel like work to me now.

Writing is like that. There are days when the words flow like a waterfall after the spring thaw. Then, there are days when it feels like I’m trying to squeeze blood from a stone – all the effort I can muster and yet, nothing.

I’ve spent the last week or so focusing on discovering the cause of my writing problems. I’ve got a laundry list of things to blame (all legit, some more serious than others), but it all comes down to me trying to force something that wasn’t happening. If I’m being honest, writing hasn’t felt effortless for an extended period of time in years. A lot of that has to do with the pressure I put on myself after having a book placed with a publisher. When I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed a huge change in the tone of my entries, starting around the beginning of 2011. I went from being ambitious and hopeful, excited about everything all at once to feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, like I couldn’t do all the things I’d set out to do and had no idea why I’d imagined I could in the first place. It’s nearly as if two different people had written them.

Depression is a huge part of this. I’ve known what was going on with me, to an extent, since I was 12. I’ve gotten insight, and medication, from a professional in the meantime, but sometimes it feels like the words are just a hollow expression of how much I suffer under it every day. Depression. Anxiety. PTSD. Words with meanings that fall just a bit short unless people know what it feels like to deal with it personally every day. There’s a sad sort of understanding we all share. The kind of camaraderie no one wants. It never goes away. It’s never “cured.” It just becomes manageable, at best. At worst, all-consuming.

Add to this my shaky job history the past few years and it’s a wonder I write at all. But I do. I love it. I live for it. It’s my catharsis, sometimes the one thing that makes me feel sane when nothing else in the world makes sense except tears and profound sadness.

Today, I wrote. It didn’t feel like work. It didn’t feel like I was putting crap on the page for the sake of saying I’d done something today. I closed my eyes, really listened to what my character had to say, and put something beautiful on the page. Being a superstitious sort, I wonder if even talking about it here will somehow jinx me. Will I be unable to write in so uncomplicated a manner tomorrow? Next week? A month from now? Is my bad streak finally dead now that I’ve found a way to break through the horrible barrier that’s been keeping me from writing for so long? Or was today a brief reprieve from my lingering misery?

Only time can tell. All I can do is be patient and hope.

It’s been a strange week. I’ve been doing a few things I know I shouldn’t be doing. Moping, for one. I have my reasons, but it’s best not to let my head get into that place for too long. Also, I’ve been bugging a writer friend of mine about her work. Well, technically it’s not bugging. I left a review for one of her stories saying that I wished it was longer (I mean for her to take it as a compliment) and when I talked to her privately, I asked about a series – more specifically, when more was coming.

Neither of those actions were bad, per se. Both mean that I want to see more of her writing, particularly with regards to characters I’d read and connected with. But I know how it feels when a well-meaning someone finishes a story they like and the next words out of their mouth are, “Then what happens?”

Writing, especially when it comes to short stories or series, can be full of anxiety about how we as writers could have done so much more. It runs the gamut from readers wondering why the next installment is taking so long to asking why the original story wasn’t longer to accomodate unresolved plot lines. Writers are even accused of splicing full stories into segments to make more money. Not going to lie. That does happen. And I think it’s crappy. There may be a legit reason (too long for a single volume print run, for example), but hitting a cliff hanger when you thought you bought a full story is no fun for a reader.

Where am I going with this? Simple. Appreciate the story for what it is. Appreciate the writers for what they do. We put a ton of pressure on ourselves, and that’s before we read the reviews or get messages from fans, friends and critics about what we could’ve, should’ve, or what they would’ve done in our stead. Be excited about the next segment, yes. But, most of all, be supportive when you like you’ve read so far. That encouragement will go a lot farther in helping that writer pen the next adventure in the series you’ve invested in than anything else.

Another year, another chance for me to realize how neglected my poor blog is. Every few months I tell myself it will be different. I will return to my old ways – blogging at least three or four times a week (sometimes every day), always with something relevant or funny because I have so much to get off my chest.

Meh. Some days I’m happy if I feel like logging onto facebook.

It’s a dilemma.

I used to be a prolific blogger. Of course, back in the dark ages of 2001, blogging was a new and exciting thing for me and maybe that was the appeal. I used to bare my soul on a regular basis (and share recipes), but it was great because it was more or less anonymous. People who read my blog only knew the online persona I wanted them to know, not the real me. Or so I told myself.

The thing is, my online persona is me. Perhaps a bit more outspoken, but there isn’t much difference. You can ask any of my online friends I’ve met in person or spoken to on the phone. I can be a bit too real.

Then I released my first book that wasn’t self-published. At that point, I had a blog where 90% of what I talked about was writing related and one that was all personal. I’d separated the two because I didn’t want the things that I vented about to be what defined me as a writer to people who only knew my stories. I wanted to distinguish  the pseudonym from the real person behind it. I made my personal blog private and eventually stopped writing in it.

Slowly but surely, I stopped writing in this one. I write a post at least once every few months, even if they don’t make it online. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes forget I have a blog, which is a Very Bad Thing. I’m a modern writer. I’m supposed to be social media savvy and accessible and funny and informative and always keeping current and potential audience members engaged and – good lord, it’s exhausting just thinking about all the things writers are “supposed” to do these days.

I just want to write. Don’t get me wrong. I like interacting with people (in person and online) in limited, controlled environments. Life doesn’t work that way, but I do try. I just don’t respond well to pressure. The current environment of constant social media engagement is a form of pressure, even if it’s internal pressure.

If I don’t engage with enough people, will they ignore me when I talk about my new book release? If I push too much, will I turn people away with my constant sales pitches? Do I thank each and every person who joins my page or friend’s list or reviews one of my books or is it too much interaction that could make people think I’m needy?

My anxiety about it is probably more intense than the situation deserves, but it’s there.

So, I make myself feel guilty for not blogging more often. Or posting constant updates to my facebook page (even when I’m not close to finishing anything). Or engaging the people who do honor me with a friend request or follow. I genuinely feel bad about all these things, but I’m not sure what I can do to “improve.” I don’t think I’m built to be a social animal. I can’t fake it because it’s online and good PR. Would anyone want me to? Do readers prefer a writer who is a social butterfly online versus one who only posts what they feel is necessary to share? I’ve been debating this for years. Would I gain more readers if I engaged more? Maybe. But it would feel forced on my part and I wouldn’t be able to keep it up.

Curses. I miss the days when I was naive enough to think promoting myself as a writer was simple. I envy writers who can do it on a regular basis. I wonder if I can get one of them to blog for me.

Over the last few years, I’ve come across a number of discussions debating the role of women in gay or male/male romance fiction and erotica. There’s no question this genre has grown a lot in the last few years, due in large part to women readers and writers. I was surprised to learn quite a few people are not happy about this.

The phrases I’ve heard tossed around are things like “culture appropriation” and “gay fetish” to describe the interest (presumably) heterosexual women have in gay romance. I’ve held my tongue when these debates have happened, partly out of self-interest (as a writer, reputation online is more important than ever these days) and partly because it’s difficult to weigh in when I see both sides of the issue.

Of course, I don’t feel like I personally fetishize gay sexuality. I like to read and write about all kinds of things, a great many of them having nothing to do with sex. But I can imagine how gay men feel when it comes to women

looking at pictures and videos of men together and reading their comments. To be objectified like that, even if it’s not about you, feels dirty. I’ve read comments that made me want to distance myself from the woman who wrote them. I’ve had women give my books low ratings because there wasn’t sex on every other page, or what sex was

there was tame compared to a lot of other books out there. It’s disheartening to realize there are people who come across like that’s all they’re interested in – many of them may not even realize it. Naturally, this results in men who hate how women are taking up such a large part of “their” world – to the point of being openly hostile to readers and writers just for being a part of this group. Some of them feel any woman who reads or writes gay romance or erotica is wrong, just because.

I liken the situation to the major political parties in the US. There are extremes on both sides who feel strongly about their position and they can be the loudest when it comes to disagreements. But, as in politics, even people within the groups sometimes don’t agree with how the extremists represent the whole.

I’m not an innocent when it comes to this particular issue. I’ve done and said quite a few things I’m not proud of and I can’t imagine the kind of impression I’ve left on gay men I’ve spoken to, either online or in person. I used to say things like “that’s so gay” because I was young and silly and it never occurred to me to question why I or others said it or how it may make someone feel. I’m more aware of how I speak to people now and I’ve largely changed the way I think. I’m cognizant of how connected I am to the world around me and the world I’ve aligned myself with, not because I’m a woman most presume to be heterosexual, but because I sometimes still feel I’m on the outside looking in. I want people to respect me and my opinions and know when they speak to me I am genuinely interested in them and not attempting to correlate them with a gay stereotype in the media. I don’t know if thinking this way now makes me more mature or less self-absorbed. I like to think it makes me more open to getting to know people, across the board. I like to think it makes me more attuned to how people respond to me. I like to think my attitude will allow people (read: gay men) to get to know me as a person and not assume I’m a hetero woman ogling them as entertainment.

But I’m just one person. There are millions of other women out there with their own variation of this story. I can’t speak for any of them.

Where am I going with this?

A little over a year ago, I got an idea for a story about a woman who gets to experience what it’s like to be a man for a day. Naturally, because of what I write, I thought it would be fun if she tried to have a sexual experience with another man. I asked around and the majority of women I spoke to agreed: If they could do it, a lot of what they’d want to experience would be sexual, either by themselves or with another person. Once I knew I was going to write this story, I realized I couldn’t do it without linking it to a larger argument: What would happen if this woman had a lot of preconceived ideas about gay men that were challenged by her

firsthand experience?

It was difficult writing this story. There were a few times I flat-out quit because I was putting so much pressure on myself to get it just right, to prove certain points. I suppose I was writing it in lieu of responding to all those arguments I kept seeing online. I pushed myself and finally wrote a story that explains, in small part, how I think some women feel when they’re reading and writing these stories. This is by no means an excuse for some comments and behavior. It’s just one possible version of reality for some people wrapped in a story.

Is the main character Jamie really me? No. Sort of. She’s a more extreme, sillier version of the me from three years ago. I learned a lot of the lessons she has to learn in the book a long time ago and I’m better for it.

I don’t expect people to love this story. I expect it to get people talking, for better or worse. I’m still trying to convince myself I’m doing a good thing. It’s not a romance. It’s…general fiction/fantasy, for lack of a better

description. I think I’m prepared for the various reactions the story will get. Maybe.

This is not an easy to read story. It’s social commentary. It’s a thinly disguised critique of my social group, groups we interact with, and a segment of our environment. I may hurt feelings. I may hurt my chances of selling books in the future.

I care about those things, but I still had to tell my story. If you’re curious how I did that, click here to read the beginning and find out where to get a copy.