There’s a question that haunts a lot of indie fiction writers, particularly after the third burned-out book in a series they don’t even want to read anymore:
Am I selling out if I quit this genre and write what I actually want to write?
Short answer: No, you’re not selling out. You’re probably saving your sanity.
Longer answer? Let’s get into it.
Today, SRP author Tracy Cooper-Posey has released the second book in her paranormal women’s fiction series, Witchtown Crossing.
Sometimes, a setting sneaks up on you. It’s not the glittering castle or the misty forest that sparks the story,
I haven’t posted here in a couple of weeks, and there’s a good reason for that. Actually, there are several.
Hot plum pudding with brandy sauce. Pumpkin pie, fresh out of the oven, melting into the custard. Home-baked cookies, or a cake cooling on the counter. You can smell them before you even see them.
Or maybe it’s red wine steeped with cinnamon and cloves—the siren song of mulled wine calling you home on a winter’s night.
Croissants in Paris, still warm, with real butter and even more real European coffee—dark, rich, and blessed with that smoky caramel scent you only get from beans grown halfway across the world.
Roasts. Gravy. Toasted bread. Spiced fruit. Deep-fried anything.
Ah yes, that question. “Why do you write?”
It’s one of those that gets asked a lot—especially in writing forums, interviews, and on the back covers of literary memoirs, usually printed in italics for some reason. It can feel a bit… woo-woo. As if the answer should be sacred and profound. (“Because the Muse demands it, obviously.”)
But the truth? Your “why” is probably a lot more practical, changeable, and occasionally downright grubby than the question makes it sound.
There’s something about a good mystery that just gets under your skin, isn’t there? The kind that makes you sit up a little straighter when it shows up in a documentary at 11:30 p.m. and suddenly you have to know what happened. Amelia Earhart is one of those mysteries. Maybe the mystery.
So, shiny new laptop in hand, I reinstalled all my software. And, of course, Microsoft Word came back with all its default bells and whistles cheerfully intact—including the dreaded live spelling and grammar check. Outlook, OneNote, the rest of the MS Office gang… same story.
Online editing tools weren’t far behind, either. And if you’ve got a grammar extension active while you’re writing in a browser, you’ll get treated to an assault of blue double-underscores that scream “BAD GRAMMAR!” like a judgy primary school teacher.
Have you ever been curled up with a romantic suspense novel, flipping pages like your life depended on it, and paused just long enough to wonder, Wait, do all bullets do the same thing? No? Just me?
Ever feel like a fraud? Like you’re just pretending to be a writer until someone finds out you’re not legit? Or maybe you keep calling yourself lazy, undisciplined, or “just not that good.”
Yeah. You’re not alone.
