Writing my first book vs. my fifth

Raising toddlers. A pandemic lockdown. Starting a new business with my husband. Why not throw in writing a novel?

To be fair, I’d been tinkering with writing for years and was chipping away at a contemporary romance. At that time in my life, I hoped to complete this novel and send it away to agents and publishers that accepted un-agented submissions. One of those was Harlequin Romance.

I checked the Harlequin website one summer day and found a contest called “Warriors Wanted.” The guidelines for the contest were broad, and after reading through, I was immediately hit with the question of, “What if the story’s warrior was a woman?” I loved the television shows Vikings and The Last Kingdom, and absolutely adored strong female characters. Later, with the sun shining overhead while at the park with my kids, I pulled out my phone and started building the character that would become Yrsa.

She was blonde and fierce and vulnerable and tall. She would go on a raid to avenge her father’s death and meet an enemy that could destroy her but would actually save her. She was gorgeous and dirty and flecked with blood. She would fall in love while held captive.

The contest deadline was weeks away, so I got to work. After I had the image of Yrsa in my head, the village of Hyrstow quickly followed suit. Next came the male main character, Ridley. Once I completed the first chapter, I edited it several times and submitted it. After several weeks, I received a request for more chapters. At that point, I had a whole world built in my head, and I finished writing that book. Though I did not get chosen as a contest winner (His Viking Captive still needed a lot of development at that point), I finished drafting the book, completed various rounds of edits and beta reads, and decided to self-publish. It came out in January 2023.

Three years later, I’ve written 2 more books focusing on Yrsa and Ridley’s friends, and one holiday novella set in the early 2000s. I am gearing up to write another series.

After three years and 4 books, how is my process the same? How is it different?

First, for each book I write, the ideas come in the same manner. With this new series, I thought of the male main character first and had a clear picture of what he would look and act like in my mind. I liked the idea of writing a biker romance where the woman was equally as cool as the man. Similar to my first book, I thought of a character, a place, and then filled in the gaps with questions. This time, though, it struck me that I wanted minimal phones, no social media. It hit me: what if I set this story in the early 2000s?

From there, my mind bombarded me with “information download.” The male friend group came through first this time. Each would get an extreme sport, but they all have to work together to achieve a common goal (more on that sooner to the book release). Their roles became clear: the setting, the female characters. As a millennial myself, I loved the idea of returning to the 2000s.

The hitch? I was still writing my third medieval romance book, Her Reckless Revenge.

I loved writing that book. It was the culmination of my Hyrstow trilogy, and I got to pull all the plot threads together. This new series idea, however, was clanging around in my mind for months. I knew that if I wanted to do the right thing and publish Her Reckless Revenge on time, I could not indulge myself in this new idea for long and set it aside to complete The Saxons of Hyrstow.

What’s different? My perception of time and publishing has changed. This time around, I allowed months to pass. I gave myself the time to enjoy summer and knew I had to improve some of my business practices before jumping into another series. There is a lot that goes on in the back end of indie publishing, and I needed to get organized. At the same time, I had the writer’s itch.

When the end of August rolled around, I decided to write an early 2000s holiday novella about a reformed party girl moving to a small mountain town where she meets the ultimate Golden Retriever snowboarder who employs her all while counting down to Y2K. Shred the Season was a blast to write. Lighthearted and short, it is the prequel to the series I am about to draft next.

This was great for 2 reasons: Shred the Season made me establish the world and a few of the characters. It also allowed me to test out different points of view. You see, The Saxons of Hyrstow series, like most historical romances, is written in third person past, limited omniscient point of view. With Shred the Season, I got to test out the first-person present point of view. It was totally different, and it felt great to flex my writing muscles.

The next major difference is the planning. I completely pantsed the SOH trilogy. Sure, I knew where the plot lines were going, but with others, I completely surprised myself. With my new series, I’ve been keeping tons of notes. I’m diving into the characters, the plot points, the themes I want to bring forward. It is all very intentional this time around.

Finally, my publishing strategy is going to be different. With my first series, day job, and family obligations, I could produce one book per year. That is a long stretch in indie publishing. There are authors who can put out 3, 5, 10 books per year. I am not that fast a writer. So, to circumvent this, I decided to try a rapid release strategy. I plan to write shorter books (around 75,000 words rather than the 93,000 words I’ve previously written) and will write them consecutively. I want to have 2-3 prepared before I even think about releasing them. I hope that this will give readers more of what they want when I publish them and it will also give me an easier time marketing the work. I love doing things in batches. It seems sensible to me that I can set aside 2026 for writing and 2027 for editing and publishing.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for staying with me. I hope I’ve offered some thoughts on allowing yourself the time and space to create.