What am I writing
It’s your girl Scotty once again to give you a long rambling about myself and books and writing.
The tone of these posts, by the way, was meant to be casual and conversational.
When I first started reading books that weren’t material forced upon me by my educational institutions, it was books that were honestly not made for children.
Why was I reading Teri Woods’ “Dutch” series? Crime? Sex? What did I really know about these topics? The characters would say “She came” and I said “When she did she leave?” Truly, a lost soul. At one point, I started skipping the sex scenes to read the other material. I vividly remember this, but I could not tell you the actual plot of these books.
And yet, it fascinated me enough that I ended up reading other books of similar risqué content. I picked up an Eric Jerome Dickey book found on my aunt’s bookshelf; A shelf, that would eventually become a staple for me. From there, I went through several books for Zane. I tried more romance without the smut because Nora Roberts was on that shelf too. But again, the content was beyond me. The adult world was very much different than what I knew in my childlike time. Worse, because I didn’t know a thing about America, having hardly left my island home.
Eventually, I grew bored of it. Especially when I became more and more immersed in anime. Fantasy didn’t need to make sense. It was, what it was, because the author said so. Ninjas could walk on water, half demons were falling in love with people from other timelines, aliens that looked like people but were also monkeys somehow got stronger by becoming blonde, and I promise you these are horrible descriptions on purpose. The point is, these nonsensical things drew me into paranormal fiction and fantasy.
With the advent of the internet, I had access to more reading material. I roleplayed online on GaiaOnline and Neopets. I then discovered fanfiction. A hot chunk of yall were doing thee most in those fanfictions.
I ate it up.
Along came Twilight…we don’t talk about Twilight. Moving along! I took a fancy to Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy. James Patterson’s Maximum Ride as well. Then J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. True Blood would eventually become another popular read way down the road.
Might I also remind you, most of these were physical books! I was lugging these suckers around with me at school, as if I didn’t have other shit I needed to walk with!
Back on topic. I watched Wolf’s Rain on Toonami and that took me down another rabbit hole. I loved shifter stories. Crazily enough, I watched and read Animorphs as a child but it didn’t click with me then. Now? Yeah, this was what I wanted. But creating a whole plot, building a world, giving characters meaning storylines? That was hard. It’s still hard.
Since my first novel, A Feral Affair, was not meant to be a shifter series but inevitably became one, I find that there was a lot that I missed out on. Mistakes that I’m actively correcting in the sequel. However, this means taking much longer because even though it’s at my discretion, it still has to make some sort of sense. Damn my childhood for making me think these things were thrown together whimsically. Hell, maybe they were and I’m the one overthinking this.
That aside, I also noticed that a lot of what I was interested in was on the darker side. I didn’t like the cutesy stories. I wanted thrillers. Mind you, I HATE horror and I HATE gore, but I don’t mind a little bloodshed here and there. I also enjoyed mysteries. There is just something about trying to solve a story that gets me going. Maybe it’s the journalist in me, I don’t know.
Hence, my next book became a murder-mystery. And yet, I am ALSO struggling to write that one.
Despite the struggle, I am having a great time. Fleshing out these stories have been thrilling. Stress, but good stress. Am I stuck on chapter 6? Yes. Am I going to have to redo several chapters? Absolutely. Will I have to insert another set of chapters to make the next chapters I’ve already painstakingly written make sense? You bet yer ass I will. But it’ll all be worth it.
Happy Reading yall!
Till next time.
