After my first novel, Breaking Seven, was released in 2019, it felt a little like the world fell flat. I'm not sure what I expected, but it was a little more than a few Facebook likes - I was good, right? I'd written a book, right?

The sheer amount of disappointment that followed - a solid 85% of blame falling on the 2020 pandemic - almost ended my writing career. But I think for some of us, it's engrained in the very nature of who we are. I can't not write.

Luckily, my 9-5 job lets me do a solid amount of writing and meets some of that need, but it's just not the same.

At some point, the voices in my head - the characters - got too loud and I couldn't not write. Those voices were the voices of Beauty, and the demons that plagued her.

After releasing They Call Me Beauty, something changed. I felt like I had done something that I was meant to do. No question about it.

Now, months later, I am working on leaving my full-time job to dive headfirst into writing.

The voices are loud again. The characters need to have their story told. To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that I might go insane if I don't get them out, although there's something to be said about writers and insanity, I'm not entirely sure if you can have one without the other. But that's just me.

J.Hieb