I have a problem with insecurity. Nothing made me realize this more than when I wrote The Sea Men Trilogy, a merman romance fantasy.
Whenever I start a new book, I’m overly excited. With creativity, there’s always a sense of urgency, a need to exhaust the mind, devising (or perhaps letting go of) something you hope will turn out to be beautiful…
…which means you want it to be perfect.
Once the first two books of The Sea Men went out, however, I considered calling it quits. The books were intended to be fun and playful with a little bit of medical and historical fiction to fill the pages. But as a new author, it was inevitable that things would not go as planned.
I made mistakes.
The high that I had from the initial creative release disappeared. I wrote three versions of the third book, none of which I was happy with because I’d become extremely insecure. My story was far from perfect.
I wanted to go back and start over, but that wasn’t possible. Like many authors, I wanted to feel that creative release again, so I put the third book on hold and wrote other books.
The Fourth Knight I had intended to be the first in a four book series. A coauthor pulled out so I scrapped the series idea and made it a standalone.
Perfection was clearly not something I was capable of.
Because of the wonderful support I have at home, I decided to give it a go one more time but I focused on something a bit different. I wrote the first of the Bang Lords with the intention I would initially give the book away. I reached the creative high I needed, but the insecurity was still there in spades and I questioned whether I wanted to keep writing at all until…
I got an email from a reader, saying she loved the book.
I was still unsure of myself, but what I’d let go of had indeed come back as the saying goes: If you love something, let it go.
I love writing and that one little message I received from a reader returned something to me.
Bravery.
It wasn’t just what I needed, but what my characters, Willis and Athena, needed. I wrote the last book of The Sea Men a fourth time.
This time, however, I was okay with my mistakes. Armed with a little bit of courage, I was okay with being human. Turns out that’s exactly what The Sea Men books are about – becoming human again.
In the end, I learned its okay to feel unsure of ourselves. Uncertainty, insecurity – these things are not easy to work through.
But you can work through them because there’s nothing more perfect than living with life’s little imperfections.
The Trilogy is Complete!
The Sea Men is a Steamy Contemporary Merman Romance.
A different sort of fairy tale.
