When I heard that Fantasy-Faction needed writers for its growing community, I thought about it for approximately a nanosecond before I responded to the opportunity. Write for a community of fantasy addicts? Are you kidding? Aside from selling millions of books and singlehandedly achieving world peace, that’s a dream come true!
But wait—fantasy readers are uber-intelligent. They want street cred. They want to know the people they read know what they’re talking about.
I’ll come clean: I’m not the most well-read fantasy reader out there. I’ve read a lot, and I have opinions, but I haven’t read everything. I read a lot of different genres. I read classics. It may be stereotypical, but I love Jane Austen. I even read non-fiction, and I love business books. Seth Godin is awesome.
So you might be wondering who I am and what kind of authority I have to write a writing column for fantasy readers and writers?
Well, I’ll give you the skinny. Fantasy is my first love. I’ve read science fiction, thrillers, mysteries, romances, and classics, and I always come back to fantasy. Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate those other genres for what they have to offer, and I love a good narrative no matter what clothes it wears. But I always come back to fantasy.
I wrote my first fantasy novel in the early 90s. It’s horrible, and it shall never see the light of day. I wrote my second fantasy novel a few years later. It’s slightly less horrible, and it may see the light of day in a highly revised version at some point in the future. I’ve written several short stories over the years, but I never had the patience for submission and querying. I tucked my stories away and went about my business, working in marketing and administrative positions and always dreaming of eventually returning to fiction writing.
At some point, my dreams changed, and then I had kids and decided that it would be wiser to work as a commercial copywriter. I could feed my writing addiction, earn money faster and more reliably than through fiction writing, and work from home. I worked as a commercial copywriter for several years before the recession hit in 2008.
When my projects came to an end and my clients took a lot of work in-house, I decided it was time to dive back into fiction writing. I started my novel Ravenmarked in 2009. In the meantime, the publishing world went completely topsy turvy, and all of a sudden self-publishing started to look a lot more viable than it ever did in the past. In December 2010, I uploaded my first self-published ebook, a dark fantasy novella called Silver Thaw, and at the end of January 2011, I uploaded Ravenmarked.
So, all of this brings me back to my introduction. I’m so excited to be joining the Fantasy-Faction team as a weekly contributor with a Wednesday writing article. I don’t have everything figured out, and I’m still working on craft myself, but I’ll share what I know and what I’ve learned. It’s my hope that we’ll all be better writers by sharing thoughts on theme, craft, genre, tropes, and grammar.
I look forward to getting to know you, Fantasy-Faction community! We’ll kick things off next week by revisiting the hero character. See you then!
