While I was editing She Sleeps with Butterflies, I plotted and drafted two paranormal romance novellas featuring a motorcycle club of wolf shifters. These stories were a way to refresh my thoughts when I felt overwhelmed by Butterflies. Editing…it’s hard, yo.
After I sent Butterflies off into the world of agents and querying, I went back to these novellas and began the editing process. From the start, I knew these would never go out for query or on submission. I also knew I could never publish them under my contemporary romance penname. Why? Because when I decided to write, I approached it as a business. I came into this process with a full branding message built into my pen name, and these novellas don’t fit it at all. They’re a bit darker, a little gritty, and they have wolf-shifting, dirty-talking bikers instead of sweet-talking, blue-collar heroes.
So for the past month, I’ve been in the trenches of starting a business, contracting editors, and working with a cover designer to make sure this series is branded appropriately. The first book in the series, Claiming His Fate, is complete; I even have the blurb up on Goodreads. The second book in the series, Claiming His Need, has me deep in my editing cave.
This whole process—from writing Butterflies, to querying, to learning to self-publish—has been made much easier by the help offered from my friends and fellow writers. I’m excited to move onto this next path in my journey, and I’m looking forward to more writing and reading with this group.
