It's officially October. Which means it's time for me to wake up every day in a panic thinking I wrote something totally unhinged in my book, like "pee poop boop loop" for 120,000 words. These are the things my brain serves up to me daily. Thank you anxiety and, well, to my love of horror movies. See below:
I don't know why I like horror movies so much as, aforementioned, I am positively bedeviled with anxiety et cetera...
...but I love them. Which is why I wanted my debut novel to:
launch in October
be about spooky things
I wanted to write a book that had all the things I love about fantasy novels in one place. What captured my imagination the most when I was younger wasn't epic or high fantasy (though those do hold a very special place in my heart), but it was what would happen if magic was in the real world. AKA urban fantasy. Reading books about normal people in average situations that stumble across a monster or a powerful artifact and following their adventures allowed me to believe it could happen to me one day.
Spoiler alert: it hasn't yet, but I'm still waiting.
If we are to extend this metaphor and get a little schmaltzy, finding magic in the mundane is what I do every day when I write. Quite literally I create something out of nothing and if that isn't magic, I don't know what is.
In either case, writing this book has been a journey, one that began when I was 23 and a much different writer. I didn't plot out or plan the novel in its entirety, landing firmly in the "pantser" category of writing styles. The complete opposite to this would be a "plotter", which is what I'm forcing myself to turn into for my next novel. But a "pantser" is when someone writes by the seat of their pants. And, oh boy, that's what I did for Janis and the Reaper. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly doesn't help when plot holes are discovered.
On top of being a "pantser", I also had a very difficult time objectively looking at my story and thinking if it was good enough to publish. Writing is already a very lonely endeavor/hobby/vocation and, at least for me, I found myself in a silo most of the time: an echo chamber. I'm sure most authors feel the same, but I really got stuck on the "it's not good enough so I'm not going to try" spinning ride of death and I couldn't make it stop until recently. That's why it took me so long to publish. That's also why I'm so excited to publish, more than just the normal excitement of publishing a debut. I need this book OUTTA HERE because it's blocking me from writing my next novel. I am an experiential learner and I needed this experience, the feedback, and the whole endeavor to prove to myself that I could do it.
And I did.
So, onto the launch day for my debut and then to even more books. My next one is going to be a doozy. Think James Bond meets Bridgerton. You'll love it.
JANIS AND THE REAPER releases October 13th, 2023 from Spellbound Publishing House.
I relate to this so much! I love urban fantasy and magical realism for the same reasons you do: it keeps me believing and searching for the magic of everyday life. The world can be a scary and sometimes terrible place, but it can also be beautiful and magical, and I think everyone would be better off of they remembered that and took the time to find the magic around them! I can't wait for your novel to drop!!!