My first foray into fiction writing was in 2001-2002 when I dabbled in short stories and children’s fiction books. Some were submitted (and rejected but with encouraging notes), many were not. This was way before self-publishing was around. In fact, Amazon only sold books, if you can imagine that!
When I first started writing fiction again in 2012, I was sure, POSITIVE in fact, that I’d be writing romance novels. I even outlined and started writing what would have been a trilogy of romance novels titled as the Chance, Hope, Celebrate series. I got to around chapter three or four in the first book and got sidetracked (okay, bored) with the story line. I was actively writing flash fiction….here’s my blog list from January of that year.
During the 2012 April A to Z Blog Challenge, I heard about NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. Traditionally held in November of each year, it encouraged writing 50k words in 30 days. They also held a June and August event, CampNaNoWriMo. It was too late for me to do June but August? Ah…I’d always loved a challenge.
So I dug into my backlog of old files for inspiration. I found two things of interest. The first was a short story written for submission to a women’s magazine (but never submitted), the second was the notes I had jotted down from a dream I had sometime around 2000-20002.
I self-published the short story, Lost and Found, in June 2012. Everyone that read it loved it but wanted more. Thus, Home Again was born. Initially I intended to write it during the August CampNaNoWriMo but for some reason decided to try my hand at mystery writing using the dream notes as my prologue. Thus the Klondike Mystery Series and book one, Not a Whisper, was born.
If you’ve followed my blog recently, you might have seen cover refreshes for my cozy mystery books, C’Mon Inn. That combined with all the pre-made covers I’ve recently added to my stash made me realize the covers of both Lost and Found and Home Again were in serious need of an update.
So what do think? While classified as romance, I think they best fit chick-lit and young adult genres. A quick, easy, clean read, you’ll find family, friendships and community involvement at the forefront.
Oh, will I ever write the Chance, Hope, Celebrate series? Maybe, I liked the initial characters and story premises. But I will definitely need new covers.
These are seriously bad (and I paid for them back then) and so far from today’s best sellers. I think I will keep them in the clean, YA market as well.
Thank you.
I remember reading your early short stories and books, but I don’t remember them as “young adult genre”. Probably “Chic-lit” would work.
You got me into the A-Z blog challenge and I remember how prolific you were turning out the words during the flash fiction challenge.
Keep on writin’ and I’ll keep on readin’. 🤩
Thanks, the market has changed a lot since 2012 and Amazon has put Home Again in YA as one of the categories it sells best in…according to their sales info (which we aren’t privy to). So I go with both YA & Chick Lit/Romance. Guess it’s because it’s clean.