Her Book Self

Though September is here, I'm holding onto the last dregs of summer for as long as possible so my Indie in Summer feature of spotlighting independent authors isn't quite done.  Joining me for a two-part guest post on this lovely labor day weekend is J.C. Phelps author of the Alexis Stanton Chronicles (Color Me Grey, Shades of Grey, and Reflections of Grey)!

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I want to start this post with a big thank you to Lisa for allowing me to post here. Her Book Self is a blog that I have followed for quite a long time and this is a great honor.

Though I run a blog of my own, I mostly post about other authors and their books. I love letting my readers know how diverse and great the writing world has become. But when I’m not posting about other authors I’ll post something more personal such as pictures of my garden, books I’ve recently read or want to read, and every once in a while I post recipes I’ve recently tried.

Since you can find all that at my blog I decided I needed something different for this post. I could write a post about my writing process. A lot of authors might be interested in something like that and maybe even some readers. Let me tell you, my writing process, if I were a hermit living in a cave, would be nothing to talk about. However, with three kids…

Just let me give you an example the things I go through after the writing bug has passed and I rejoin the real world.

The other day I finally had an idea and started to type it up on the computer. I wasn’t involved in my writing for very long before I had to pull myself away and yell at the three-year-old to get out of the kitchen. She loves to get into everything, including the cleaning supplies. I can’t have that!

Later, after I’d made sure she remained in my sights for the majority of the day, I made a journey into the kitchen for coffee or something else equally mundane. I about fell on my butt.

In the course of the couple of minutes she had spent in the kitchen earlier that day, the three-year-old had managed to get butter out of the refrigerator and spread it all over the floor in front of the refrigerator AND she had washed the floor in front of the sink with nothing but dish soap. Butter AND dish soap on linoleum creates a slippery situation.

These are the kinds of things I must deal with whenever I stick my head into my computer for more than just a few seconds. Even though I could write an entire book on the antics of my three-year-old and how she affects my writing process, I decided I didn’t want that to be the main topic of my post. So what should I write about, I wondered.

The next thing on my list was talking about my self-published status and why I chose that route. Again, this would be something that could be interesting to other authors, but the general reader really just doesn’t care that I didn’t submit to agents or publishers because I have no patience and I’m afraid of deadlines. The general reader doesn’t care about the business of writing and how I think it’s best to have your books out there, gathering readers and making money rather than sitting in the drawer gathering dust. So, cross that off the list and move onto…

What are some of the questions people have asked me after reading my books?

Well, the most frequently asked questions are, “Are you going to write another book? When is it coming out?”

The answers to these questions are as elusive to me as they are to the reader. Let me just say I am working on a fourth book. But because of my writing process and my fear of deadlines I have no idea if I can ever finish it or give a release date until it is complete.

So, I finally settled on submitting a scene I have written. It may or may not be used in an upcoming book.

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Stay tuned tomorrow for the scene that J.C. Phelps wrote for us!