Let’s talk about my writing history here. I don’t mean it as a brag, not much anyway. It’s just context, and it’s interesting context.

I spent about 2 years writing like a madman. A book a month or so. Massive, massive amounts of content. I kept it going even through some pretty intense exhaustion, and I don’t regret that.

But there came a day when I was working on a book and I wasn’t exactly blocked, I was just…off. I felt tired of it, unwilling, though not unable, to write another book. The stories I already created, that only I had seen, felt like they were staring at me with menace. Like they were angry with me for letting them rot and gather dust.

My word count suffered. Stories felt like redos of things I’d already written, not original creativity.

So I stopped. I went to only writing a few hundred words a day of simple poems. I quickly ended up with hundreds of poems, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is this: I decided to write short stories sometimes, but not anymore books—not until I published all the old ones.

But then Reading Away the Hours happened.

I know it is not a lot, but I have sold over 30 copies of the book. And I keep getting consistent readership. I’ve published 4 books: two sci-fi, one fantasy, one horror.

And horror sells. Only my horror sells. No one seems to care about anything else much.

But you know those 2 years of writing books? Almost none of it is pure horror, and the horror I did write is older, sloppy. Basically novice-level manuscripts. I was still very much learning when I penned them.

So, the logic was obvious. If horror sells, and you want to sell, then sell more horror.

Write more horror books.

But I’m scared to write a new book. I hope all this context frames why I’m terrified to do it. Because there’s still like 15 or so books that are languishing, crying out for editing, and I’m again going past them.

Will I get blocked again? Was the first horror book a fluke, or special, and it’s not actually a market I can break into twice?

I don’t know. I’m scared of the answer. But if I want to be an author who makes a good amount of money off authoring, then it’s the path I must walk.

I have an outline; a good idea for a book percolated and is ready to pop.

I’ve certainly written more challenging stories and longer novels than this planned one.

But will I fall, fail, and stop again?

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Special thanks to: Melissa Potter

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