A Novel Out This Month?!?!

I can hardly believe it myself.

In the beginning of my journey, I labored over every story interminably. After listening to English professors and agents drill into my head the idea that books couldn't be written in less than a year and that the only way to write an "important" work was to spend several years writing, rewriting, revising, polishing, content editing, line editing, and copy editing, I believed that was the only way to write a book and I'd be lucky to finish 10 novels before I died.

Fast-forward to the end of last year.

I finished a short story in a couple days. My joy at such speed was soon worn down by that nagging self-doubt: there was no way it could be any good. I hadn't spent enough time on it.

I don't know how I got the idea, but suddenly I decided to go back and read some of my older shorts, the ones that had taken me months to finish.

Aside from a few typos and a few tweaks, I saw no significant difference in quality that a quick rewrite couldn't fix.

But surely that was wrong, because that flew in the face of all the advice I'd gotten or read over the years.

Right?

Right?

I put the story aside and worked in my spare time on a few other projects, slowly building up the word counts. (I write under several pen names.)

I began to see success with those stories and the good reviews started coming in.

I kept working, kept improving my craft, kept trusting the process. The more I worked, the more I practiced, I figured I had to get better. The progress wouldn't necessarily be linear from project-to-project, but I hoped to see a long-term upward trend (like the market).

I felt I was getting better and close enough to start publishing erotica and romance. So in this month, I wrote, edited, and published three short stories (Big and Beautiful, Hostile, and Touch). Am I crazy? Probably.

No, definitely.

But there is no better judge of the material than the reader, so I'm waiting with bated breath for feedback through emails and reviews. (Hint, hint)

And I might just push out a novel this month. Now, I wrote most of it earlier this year and came back to it two weeks ago. But still, in terms of a novel that's pretty speedy and right now I'm happy with it. (Needs polishing, like everything, but it's close)

These four titles will serve as a good experiment for me to test the truth of the age-old idea that stories must take a long time to write.

More to come...