Building Confidence One Spicy Romance Book At A Time
Building Confidence One Spicy Romance Book At A Time
I’ve always found it easier to write fiction, rather than talk about myself. It’s a problem many authors have, which is probably why marketing can be so difficult.
But back in 2018 I started a blog at my publisher’s suggestion, and over time it’s become easier for me to share with the world. It began as a simple author’s blog. I intended to post about my books mostly, little snippets of my work, upcoming releases. The usual thing you find on an author website.
It didn’t stay simple for long. Without ever really planning it, I started to write more about myself, my relationships, and my experience in the kink world. There were plenty of BDSM blogs and websites around, but I saw a need for one written by an author of fiction, who also lived the lifestyle.
It was a great opportunity to compare the differences between what we fantasize about and what we desire to live in our real lives. Those things are often very different. The reaction was so positive that I expanded on it. Now the blog focuses just as much on teaching people about kink as it does my fictional works.
The unintentional side effect has been learning to be more comfortable with promoting myself and my work, but it’s been a long journey to get that confidence. My career was originally shaped by my preference to stay in the shadows, and my fear of stepping out of my comfort zone.
I was only twenty-one when I sold my first story. I hadn’t intended to. There was no submission process and I came to it from the side door, which let me skip a lot of the issues other people have getting started in the literary world.
Back then I wrote for fun, and my stories could be found on newsgroups and various websites. Some of it was fanfic, some were fantasies, or even just spun from writing prompts. I enjoyed writing, but what got me involved in the publishing world was my fetish artwork.
At the time I was working for several magazines and my work wasn’t exactly top tier but it was a niche genre without much competition. I was quick, and I could draw almost anything from a brief description. It suited the editor. She was usually running late and would drop a few descriptions in my email the night before and I would send them back the next day.
After a few months of producing drawings on demand, the editor approached me. She’d seen some of my art that she liked, but she didn’t have stories for it. She knew I wrote as well and had read some of my work, so she wondered if I could write short stories to go along with the pictures.
So, I produced my first short story for publication by request. She was thrilled with it, and after that I was writing for her weekly. The publisher had about ten different magazines and over time I ended up writing stories for all of them, as well as illustrating my own work and other’s.
I wasn’t making enough to quit my day job but between all of it, I was equaling my paychecks, which is really pretty good in this field. Years later, I moved up to editing and running a few of the magazines myself, but the niche genre of kinky magazines was starting to dry up by then.
The Internet provided too many sources for free stories and art, but more importantly kink was starting to go mainstream. Certain books going bestseller had brought BDSM romance into the light and it changed the whole field.
With the market for short stories and articles slowly drying up, I started considering books more seriously, but I knew, without a doubt, that writing a book was going to be a lot more work than short stories.
When I did eventually write a book it was mostly an accident. It started as a usual monthly deadline for twelve-thousand words. By the time I got to twenty thousand words I realized I had a problem. Not only was I nowhere near wrapping up but… there wasn’t even a decent place to break it into pieces and submit it separately.
I considered rewriting the whole thing, but I didn’t want to. The story had pulled me in. The plot was good, and I knew that there was no way I could do it justice in short form.
My first paranormal romance was about a haunted house and a medium who is hired to live there for a month. Her job is to stir the spirits up so that a ghost hunting team from the university can study them. She gets a lot more than she bargains for when she falls in love with a Dominant ghost.
And while the cameras only see her and the results of what he does to her, her powers allow her to interact with him completely. There was no way this story was going to be short, not even in a series. It needed a book.
By the time I realized it was going to be a whole novel I was seventy-five thousand words in, and after a little research I realized that it was already a bit long for my genre, with no end in sight. I didn’t really know all the rules and I had no idea how to pace things.
I managed to wrap it up at ninety-five thousand words, with a somewhat abrupt ending that demanded a sequel, but I had a problem. What was I going to do with it now?
I’d never really planned to submit the book anywhere. The whole thing had taken me by surprise, and by the time I worked up the courage to submit it to a publisher, the sequel was half done.
And after all of the anxiety, following their steps to submission so carefully, writing up a blurb and a synopsis—while second guessing everything I had written… it all turned out somewhat anticlimactic.
The submissions editor had been reading my stories for years. Within twelve hours I got an acceptance e-mail that noted “It’s about time we saw something from you,” and from there things moved quickly.
Five and a half years later a lot has changed. I’ve published twenty books to go along with the hundreds of short stories from the early half of my career. I moved away from the publisher of my first books, and into the realm of self-publishing, though I’m not entirely indie.
I do occasionally still submit things to other publishers, but I also enjoy the creative freedom that being an indie author gives me. It lets me work at my own pace, which I enjoy. In the beginning a lot of my steps were unplanned, but now I make deliberate choices about what I want from my career.
It’s been an adventure in learning, but I’m making great progress in getting where I want to be.
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About the Author
USA Today Bestselling Author Kessily Lewel, and her darker side Sadie Marks, are two halves of the same author. All of her work falls under the category of power-exchange romance. Kessily’s books tend more towards sexy romance with a side of domestic discipline, while Sadie has been sticking to sci-fi, with her race of Dominant aliens who are looking for a few good humans to call their own.
She has been in love with fantasy, sci-fi and horror since she was a child. She grew up reading Stephen King, Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and others, so it was only natural that one day she’d write her own worlds—though hers do seem to have a lot more sex and BDSM in them.
You can find Sadie and Kessily here:
Category: On Writing
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