Why not? Amazon have made it very easy to do so. Perhaps I decided to do it because I simply could. Or perhaps, because everyone else seems to be doing it. Lots of people have had success with it. I think whenever I sit down to ask myself the question, the overriding answer is that I did it because of the freedom it has offered me. The freedom to write what I want, how I want and when I want. Call it vanity, arrogance, or ignorance even, but I simply love writing. I love, love, love it. And I love when people enjoy it – and I know there are some out there whose happiness does pivot on what happens to my characters! I never thought my words could do that, but they can it seems!        

Maybe I did it because I did not believe I would be able to land a literary agent because I was crossing genres. Maybe because I am an unknown author who is literally emerging and I want to simply see how my stuff gets received, rather than wait around for ages. If I was honestly bothered about the dosh, I would have been banging on the doors of agents until I was blue in the face and had finally got a mega publishing deal. I was never after that, however. I have an 18-month-old and I have priorities.

I made the decision. Whether it will prove to be the right one in the long-term, who knows? But I thought long and hard about it. I made it and decided not to regret it. I love writing. I love it when people enjoy it. First and foremost, I’m a mother. But I also happen to be able to spin a good yarn. Traditional publishing is obviously going to help you produce the best product you can because you have so many editors and seasoned pros on hand (but that’s only if you can find the right people for the right product – and my product is shall we say, unique and complex). I’m not sure what I’ve written could even be classed as a product. It is sprawling and eccentric, perhaps even barmy and pushing the boundaries just a little too far. It is raw and untameable even, a bit like me. However, I’m testing the waters. I’m developing all the time. If these books are a precursor to something bigger and better, so be it. I feel as though I have a few more novels in me yet.

I’ve made mistakes along the way. Many. When you self-publish, you have nobody to fall back on. But that’s what makes you stronger, after all. It is a tricky game but it is probably one that is going to make me hardier. Get it…? Little ‘in-joke’ there.

These books have been begging to be written for ages and I won’t be able to stop until they are done! It has been just over a year now since I really knuckled down to this task and it’s still ongoing. It’s been an intense period of furious writing, then editing, then re-writing and proofing and re-reading and re-writing. Sometimes having hundreds of thousands of words swimming in your mind can cause slight insanity! A strange way of working but it is how I do it. It works for me. We have Beneath the Veil and Beneath the Betrayal already out there. I’m probably 90% done with the first draft of Beneath the Exile, which is going to prove just how much I’ve learnt. I hope the writing of that will do the talking for me. Anyway, we’ll see!

Seeing as though I’m currently writing my third novel this year (the last in a trilogy), I thought I might start this blog as a kind of therapy or something, some escape from the other writing I do perhaps!

I thought maybe I might start with the topic of how I came to write in the first place. I suppose it all started when I was about eight years old. I immersed myself in books from then on and have since read a whole bunch of genres, from classics to romance, chicklit to YA fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, thrillers and biographies. I don’t much like horror or detective novels. I don’t know why, but they are not really my taste.

For my English degree I wrote a dissertation on the Brontë sisters’ novels, focusing on the use of the supernatural in them. It is where my literary education started really, in Yorkshire, that is. I’m using a quote from WutheringHeights to head my third novel and it kind of sums up the whole trilogy really (even though in my books I weave quite a few genres together). I am trying to explore the question of whether romance ever really mirrors real life, or whether it is always going to be a genre that ultimately glamorises love in one way or another. Does romance simply gain audiences because it appeals to women/men’s notions of imperfect perfection? Of a love lost but a journey well-travelled? Of a love found amongst the most unlikely circumstances? Stories themselves can be whatever they want to be, fiction can take us into realms we never thought possible and force us to ask the questions we often don’t like to but which we secretly need to. Sometimes we race to the end of the book hoping for one ending, and get given another. That can be terribly frustrating. Sometimes we don’t like that ending (mentally rail against it even) and curse the author for days afterwards for killing off our favourite character or concluding a love story in a way we never expected. Surely if we are thinking about a book for days afterwards, that means the author did their job properly. I love the debate. It’s why I read books within a day sometimes. It’s why I’m writing my third novel this year.

So much is down to taste, so much is in the art of the storytelling, and a lot else is in pure talent. After all, how many people in their lifetimes actually turn an idea into a novel, and from there, make it a success? Few. But it is the writing of it to me, that seems to make it all the more worthwhile – book deal or no book deal. The experience can take you to places you never expected.

It was when I had a child some 18 months ago, I was figuring out a story in my mind while I was busy breastfeeding. I was sat watching the Royal Wedding and it seemed so much like a fairytale. Everyone wants to believe in that. I am inspired by everything and everyone around me. I remember tiny details from childhood sometimes rather unexpectedly, out of the blue, and it can sometimes lead me to pursuing an idea for a plot or something. You have to relate to your characters/stories/locations, otherwise, it wouldn’t be tangible.

I started writing when my daughter was off the boob and sleeping through the night. I knew first and foremost I wanted to set my book in the future. I also started with the vague idea of a bridal house being the cover for a resistance group fighting against a terrifying organisation that seem to have been responsible for a terrible catastrophe some decades before. Before long, I was spending nights tapping away at the keyboard like a madwoman. The creative process for me was organic. I never had a notepad by my side. I kept mental notes of all ideas, and sometimes if necessary, I wrote a bunch of bullet points in a word document to remind me to add bits in or take bits out. I showed the finished product to my husband and he could not believe what I had managed to turn out. I am a woman who has done little creative writing in the past (too scared to see where my mind might take me), never did creative writing while at university (was too busy examining feminist fiction) and now I was suddenly tackling a full-blown 100,000-word novel. But that’s the person I am. All or nothing. And I’ve since had a few people tell me they also really like what I write.

So, there we have it. I’m a fledgling writer with a desire to write something new and dynamic. Maybe I’ll talk about how I weaved so many genres together at some point. But I think next time I might tell you why I chose to self-publish, and explain the effort involved in that.