Introduction

Hey friends! I’m coming at you from my new home on Beehiiv! I hope you’ll join me here as I continue my authorial adventure. Speaking of which, I have gotten two acceptances for stories and one for a nonfiction proposal since we last talked! Aaaand I can’t tell you where any of them are going yet. Sorry! I promise, as soon as it’s public, I’ll post it.

My novels are going. My agent has my contemporary, supernatural horror, so I’m dying a bit. My second beta has my dark fantasy. Cue me sitting alone with my fantasy court intrigue romance comfort-writing myself into oblivion (at 91,000 words so far!). How’s your stuff going? Tell me in the comments!

For self or audience

So, let’s say that one of my books (*cough* it’s the dark fantasy) has become a problem child. First, let me tell you a little about it. The pitch:

Doesn’t seem evil, does it?

But let’s just say all of this is happening in the context of an authoritarian government. And let’s say there’s significant striation between the “rich” (who are still pretty poor) and the poor (who are very poor).

In this context, I wanted to explore a central question:

The problem is that I’m convinced people are going to hate the way I’ve dealt with the central argument because this is not a book of violent revolution. It’s a book about healers trying to heal in the midst of conflict. And attitudes I know are very much colored by what’s going on in the *gestures wildly at world*.

So, what is it then? Audience or self?

I have two options. I can write the book the way I see it in my heart, or I can write the book that I know a large part of the audience is going to prefer. Because I’m not stupid. I see people’s opinions. I follow what they post and like. And I know that the book, heart-shaped, is too soft and quiet for that.

If you thought this was a post providing answers, oh boy, am I about to disappoint you. The thing is, I’m not sure yet. Part of me wants to be true to my vision of the book. My therapist certainly has these grand ideas of writers being true to themselves and writing the books of their hearts, and there is something nice about that.

But publishing is also a business, and I want to sell a book, which means I need an audience to be on board. In a field where you can get rejected for not enough romance, too sapphic, too violent, not violent enough, too much skiing, not enough plot, in a book where you never intended to make it that way, it’s hard to cling to the book of your heart when the book of your head is more prudent and perhaps more marketable.

In Conclusion

Is this a Sense & Sensibility problem? Is this something you’ve struggled with before? Let me know in the comments. Let’s get a dialogue going.

And if you appreciate what I do, consider slinging a ko-fi my way or checking out the Kickstarter for my upcoming anthology, Enter Here (submission information also provided).

Thanks for listening!