I just realized it's been almost three whole months (been six weeks, at least) since I made a post here on the Diary.
Wow.
It was never my intention to be away for so long. The truth is, I got so mentally exhausted by the editing process on Fire Loved that I decided I needed a break from professional writing. For my writer's vacation, I chose to return to one of my favorite past times: fan fiction.
I know -- it's not much of a vacation from witing when I'm still writing, right? Well, not exactly. You see, when I'm writing one of my books, I'm doing it as a business. I'm hoping to make some money by writing a captivating and entertaining story. With fan fiction, I write it just because I love it. Don't get me wrong, I certainly love my professional work too -- otherwise, what would be the point? But the business aspect of professional writing can take a toll, especially on an indie writer like me who literally does everything, from the writing, to the editing, to cover design, to marketing. More than once in the final stages of writing a book, I've gotten almost to the point where I was sick of it, because I wanted it to be over with already. Doesn't mean I don't love what I do, it just means that when it's work, it's not always fun.
Fan fiction is all about the fun. Playing around in the world of another's creation (like Star Trek, my personal favorite fandom) can be great fun. You can either use characters made up by the original creator of the world, or you can create your own. With my Trek fanfics, I created a number of starship crews full of original characters. Some are human, some are not. I spent most of the last several weeks setting up a new website for my fan fiction, where it can be proudly displayed for the reading pleasure of any Star Trek fan fiction aficionado -- the site will also be home to the work of a few friends in the Trek fanfic community, with whom I have a close relationship. Their characters and my own inhabit the same universe in a shared continuity.
Confused yet? I suspect some of you might be, if you're not familiar with the terminology associated with fan fiction writing. Sorry if you are!
In any case, that's where I've been all this time. And unfortunately, I'm not quite finished yet. I still have a few more stories to edit and post on the website, plus a couple of pages to build, before it's ready to go public. However, I've realized that while I want to complete that task (and dedicate at least a portion of my time to fanfic in the future, as opposed to just putting it on the back burner), I also need to turn my attention back to my professional work. Over the last six weeks or so, I have actually been working on a short story that will appear in a holiday anthology for Christmas, but it's not quite finished yet. I've also plans to write at least two more short stories and I hope to expand a previously published short into a novel -- or at least a novella. All I need to do is get my head in the game.
Please help me out with crossed fingers and positive thoughts. I appreciate more than you know all the support my readers give to me!
