This is the beginning of a new chapter for me. My writing has gone through so many phases since I first started.

Phase 1: Shitty high school YA writer. Maybe I’m being hard on myself, but like many authors, my first book was a written testimony of all the things I wished life was. It was about a teenager name Sage who moved to his dad’s hometown (someplace in Oklahoma, sound familiar?) and was forced to enroll in a new school. All the girls liked him (which of course led to a love triangle) and because all the girls liked him, all the guys hated him. But…he was an excellent fighter who took no shit from anyone and could hold his own when it came to swinging fists. Yep, it was everything I wished life was. I wrote it down in spiral notebooks with the title The Good Life scribbled across the front in ballpoint pen. Under the title was a big circled number so I could keep track of the pieces of the story. My female classmates loved the book. Like a novel version of a creative relay race, the first girl would start with notebook one, she’d read it, and hand it off before she received notebook two. There were six parts to the story and ultimately it sucked enough for me to toss it all into the garbage about ten years ago. I’ve thrown away at least three books written back then.

Phase 2: After hearing about Movie Magic Screenwriter and how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck used the software when writing their award winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting, I decided to give movie scripts a try. I bought David Trottier’s Screenwriter’s Bible and studied on my own. I wrote my Edge of Reflection series out in screenplay format and started pumping out dialogue heavy stories like nobody’s business. I wrote a musical, a romantic comedy, several horror scripts, and even my version of where the Halloween series should go. Once I even met a movie director at an elegant dinner party, a director whose name I actually recognized as being a someone in the industry. After a short conversation with him, he gave me his email address and told me to send him my romantic comedy. I did, and the feedback I received was tough, but it was eye opening. He basically said my character development sucked. The story was funny, but there was no reason to care about my characters. Fair enough. Back to the drawing board.

Phase 3: Movies aren’t so easy to make on your own and finding the funding for one is even more difficult so I started considering graphic novels. I studied all the info I could find online about turning my Edge of Reflection series into a graphic novel. Back then, the story had more characters and longer, more detailed fight scenes. Turns out, finding a good illustrator isn’t easy either. Most, and for good reason I suppose, want to be paid upfront. I wasn’t in a financial position where I could afford to lay down the funds for projects that weren’t guaranteed to bring a return. So I moved on.

Phase 4: Once I moved to my wife’s country, I started thinking again about writing novels, especially since I’d heard about Amazon’s new KDP program. I’d sent over 50 query letters to agents and maybe received five rejection letters back. The rest? Never heard from them again. It was the typical story most aspiring novelists go through. It’s a Catch 22 because most agents want an established author. Most publishers want an author represented by an agent. It’s not easy to become that established author without the agent and the publisher. See the problem? So I signed with a small publishing house that ended up screwing me in the end. Not only did the publisher constantly complain through a barrage of daily emails letting us all know how difficult it was to deal with authors like us, but she also hired a new PR person who, on a Friday night at about 10pm, emailed me to let me know I would no longer be on their team due to low sales. By 8am the next morning, my only two books at the time, were no longer available for purchase. It was a breach of contract since I had it in writing that I would be given at least two months notice before removing my books from sales channels in the event that I would no longer be published by the company. I didn’t fight it. It wasn’t worth it. Instead, I saw it as a blessing. I was no longer handcuffed to this publisher. I could go back to doing things my way. I decided to start putting my first book on Wattpad and the old program Amazon had at some point. I can’t remember the name of it now, but it was basically their version of Wattpad.

Phase 5: With my story posted online for free in exchange for feedback, I met some great people. One of whom loved my story but suggested I switch it to first person POV. She also thought my style would work well in the erotic romance genre. I’d never thought about it before. I’d been focused on dark urban fantasy and horror for so long. This friend of mine dared me to try erotica. She told me about all the recent success stories following Fifty Shades of Grey. I’d never read erotica. It wasn’t my thing. I’ve always been a very sexual person so I figured I could write sex. Kinky Carnival Games was my first shot at a sexual tale. I wanted to write about a girl who gets fucked on a Ferris wheel. Mission accomplished. Now what? I had no idea how to establish a social media presence. I began meeting people who would help with that. I got my first PA and we started a street team and a fan club/reader group. At first, I wrote as C.C. Genovese because I figured if people weren’t sure whether I was a male or a female author, they’d be more likely to give my books a try. That didn’t last long. I was so uncomfortable. I couldn’t be gender neutral. So, within a few months of publishing, I switched my pen name to Chris Genovese. Chris is my real first name and it felt amazing being able to be myself online. From that point on, I went full speed ahead. Facebook takeover after Facebook takeover, I came up with creative ways to play with the fans and readers. I had a great time. And I kept writing erotic romance stories.

Phase 6: My passion has always been the darker, more twisted tales, and I thought I could write those under the name Chris Genovese. So I did for awhile. I re-published my Edge of Reflection dark urban fantasy series and added more graphic sex scenes to appeal to my new audience. I heard crickets. I thought my readers would be excited to read something different, but they’re erotic romance fans for a reason…because they like erotic romance. Makes sense, right? I tried erotic horror too. Same result. Plus, I hated the way my Amazon backlist, my catalogue as I often call it, looked. Maybe Mandy was right next to Diablo Snuff. Daughters of Venus was stuffed between Twisted Mirrors and Figments of Fear. It was a mess. So I created the Carver Pike pen name and published all my darker stuff under that name. Now, Chris Genovese could be the fluffier, fun guy and Carver Pike would be the truly fucked up one. Things were going okay.

Phase 7: As if I were a drug dealer slinging crack on the social media market, I put in the work, man. I did a shitload of takeovers including a few where I singlehandedly entertained the readers for 5 to 6 hours at a time. I launched Authors in the Dark on YouTube to give authors who didn’t like to show their face on social media the chance to read their books to an audience with their face shrouded in darkness. It was really cool. Readers could watch each weekly video without knowing who the author was, and then click the link at the bottom to be taken to their Amazon book page. I created I think close to thirty of these videos, but authors weren’t as eager to participate as I thought they’d be and readers didn’t seem so interested in viewing the videos, so I had to put the project to the side. It was just taking up too much of my time. I attended my first book signing at Naturally Naughty in NOLA in New Orleans in 2017. For the first time, I got to meet my readers face to face. I could hug some of the people who’d made my life so amazing over the past few years. And I was able to meet some of the authors I knew online. It was more like a family reunion than an author signing.

Phase 8: Writing wise, I could feel myself growing. The fun erotic stuff was cool and all, but instead of coming up with short, one-handed read ideas, I kept thinking about full length novels and I had a desire to write stories that wouldn’t really fit in with the work I was currently publishing. Then I was invited to join the Romance & Erotica Authors Fraternity on Facebook. Click HERE to be taken to the R&E Frat group on FB. I’d looked up to the guys in that group for a long time and was excited to join them. This brotherhood of male authors puts on live videos to interact with readers and shares excerpts, etc. It felt like I was reaching a new level. In addition to that, I launched the Horror Authors’ Carnival group on Facebook so Carver Pike would have a fun place to play with his readers. Click HERE to check out that group where I’ve joined together with other horror, paranormal, and suspense writers to chat with and share work with our readers. This past year has been one of growth and connecting with readers and other likeminded authors. We’ve had a lot of drama in our indy author world, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re a pretty close knit community. Last year, I attended the Frat signing in Gettysburg and the Naturally Naughty in Nola signing again. Yet, something was constantly nagging at me all the time. I knew I was better than the books I was churning out.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my stories, but I have much deeper ones to tell.

Phase 9: So here we are. It’s 2018 and my head has been a mess. I’ve complained on Facebook a few times about being cock blocked by Amazon and Facebook. I’ve had such a hard time trying to promote myself and get the sales to make all my hard work make sense. That, combined with all the recent drama on social media, has made me really think about things in a different light. I love writing. I always have. But now it’s time for it to be much more than a hobby. So I need to make some changes. If I’m ever going to do this full time, I need to be smarter about how I do things, or I’ll burn myself out. Here are some of my plans.

I’m going to seriously limit the amount of takeovers I do. They’re fun, but I need to focus more on spending time on writing.
I’ll continue doing my live feeds in the R&E Frat and in the Horror Authors’ Carnival, alternating weeks. So I’ll do one on Monday in the Horror Authors’ Carnival, and then the following week I’ll do it on Thursday in the Frat. Then the following Monday in the carnival and so on.
No anthologies. I understand the reason for them and I know they help with charities and stuff like that, but any work I put out has to have an ability to make some sort of profit for my family. I can’t keep telling my family that I’m spending time away from them for side projects. I hope everyone understands.
I’m taking my writing in a new direction. Sure, I might come back to some of the lighter, silly stories later, but for a while I’m going to focus on edgier work, mostly full length novels. You can expect a crime series (Mafia like), an MC series, a paranormal series, etc. These are the kinds of things I like writing, so it’s time to get back to what I love doing.
I’ve already unpublished my Edge of Reflection series because I think that friend of mine from so long ago was correct. It should be in first person POV. I also need to add so much more to it. So it will be back on Carver Pike’s Amazon page soon enough. I just need to put in the work to make that story as great as it should have been to begin with. It was an awesome story, but it can be so much greater.
I will continue publishing books in Milly Taiden’s Paranormal Dating Agency series. I may cross over into some of her other worlds too. We’ll just have to see where that road leads. Milly is a really cool person and I can’t wait to see what comes of this new relationship. For now, I’m going to re-release Oh, Bite Me under her new publishing house and have already begun working on the sequel, Bite Me Harder.
New website. You’re on it, so you know this already. Erotic Mayberry was a cool idea. I thought it would be fun to build a kinky neighborhood. I won’t change the name of my fan/reader group on Facebook, but for my website, it just didn’t make sense. Nobody is going to think to look up Erotic Mayberry when trying to find my website. So this will be better I think. For now, and I’m not sure if it’ll stay this way, I’ve also put a tab up top to show my Carver Pike books. Carver Pike also has a website at www.carverpike.com which I rarely use. I need to get better at managing all these different aspects of my life.
Will I sign with a publisher or an agent? I’m not as opposed to the idea as I once was. It just needs to make sense. If I find the right one and they’re willing to put in as much work as I am to grow my brand, then that’s always a possibility. For now, I’ll keep going the indy route and see what happens.

So that was my author journey in a nutshell. Thanks for reading this far and for holding my hand on this journey. Hopefully we’ll find ourselves in some pretty kickass places in the near future.

Chris Genovese