Taking A Break For The Foreseeable Future + Publishing Decision

(Image by voltamax on Pixabay)

The recent reading disappointments I’ve had, apart from ‘Brimstone’, appear to have landed me in a bit of a reading slump; I haven’t picked up another book since ‘Traitor’s Blade’.

There are other titles I already have, ready to read; I go to the bookshelf only to stare at them then walk away.

Annoyingly, it seems to have had a knock-on effect on writing; inspiration is nowhere to be found.

Actually, the lack-of-writing is not all the fault of the reading slump.

Though this may be oldish news to some, I’ve only recently discovered from watching book reviews on YouTube, reading them on blogs, and perusing the displays at bookshops, that the big thing in YA fantasy is romantasy, or romantic fantasy.

I’m not knocking anyone who enjoys the genre, but it’s just not my thing as I’m not a big romance reader whether it’s YA or not; I don’t mind the odd touch of romance here and there but prefer it not to be the focus of the story.

And that made me think about the stories I write, which led me to question if there’s any point in continuing to write with the view to publish, even though I self-publish.

I know I won’t change the kind of stories I write to simply fit whatever the current trend is.

There’s also the impossible-to-ignore point of marketing my books.

The truth is, I’m still rubbish at marketing, so what really is the point of writing to publish?

I won’t bore you with the to-ing and fro-ing of my decision-making, but, first, I’ll be taking a break from blogging as I seem to have lost my blogging mojo… bound to happen, I suppose, after 15 years of blogging.

But I won’t be totally abandoning my blog…

The other thing I’ve decided is to unpublish and remove my novels from the platforms where they’re currently sold to then post them here on the blog.

The first two, ‘The Cursed Gift’ and ‘Moon Goddess’, and the collection of short stories, ‘The Raven and Other Tales’, will be ‘published’ on the blog in their entirety.

As for ‘The Spellbound Spindle’, I’ll post that in serial form, a chapter per week on my usual blogging day, Tuesday.

All things being equal, I’ll start that in January.

I’ll also be doing that with any new stories I’ll be writing.

My current work-in-progress, a novel very, very loosely based on ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, is currently being read by my very critical sister who’s not shy about telling me exactly what she thinks.

When I feel that’s ready, I’ll be posting that, again in serial form, later in the year.

I won’t be badgering anyone to read my stories, but I hope some will read and, more importantly, enjoy the stories; for me, that’s what success looks like – sharing my stories for people to read and, hopefully, enjoy.