​The awesome co-hosts for the February 5 posting of the IWSG are  Joylene Nowell Butler, Louise Barbour, and  Tyrean Martinson!

February 5 question - Is there a story or book you've written you want to/wish you could go back and change?

As I’ve said before, I want to re-edit my first book. I made rookie mistakes, and I know I can do better with the skills I’ve learned in recent years. I still plan to tackle it, but I need to use my old computer with MS Word for consistency. I’m afraid if I use my Mac I’ll accidentally have different formatting. It’s important to me that all fonts, spacing, margins, etc match perfectly with the other books in the trilogy. Using my old dinosaur computer is a pain, so I’ve been procrastinating. I’m in a bit of a transitional phase now. My to do list is: edit book one, try out some paid advertising on my completed trilogy, and then move on to phase two… 

Phase Two
I’m writing something in a new genre that I plan to publish under a new pen name. I don’t think my current readers would be interested in my work in progress, and I wouldn’t want to alienate any of them.  I’m going to go wide this time, not stick to Amazon. I intend to make my own simple covers and publish as ebooks only, no print versions. On that note, does anyone have a recommendation for a graphic design program? I like Canva because it’s free, but there are so many complicated rules about licensing. I don’t want to shell out money for Adobe Illustrator, but I’m looking for something like that where I can make covers from scratch. 

Has anyone ever tried starting over with a new pen name? I’m intimidated by the amount of work it will take, but I don’t want to write YA forever.