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Yet Another Book and Life Update…

June 20, 2024 emjaye11

Hello All,

I am here writing once again on the updates for my books and life. Life threw me some big curveballs recently. I currently have two full manuscripts waiting for final edits, and have not been able to get them done. For those of you waiting I am so sorry. Golon’s story, which turned into a beast of a book, is ready to get going for the final legs of publishing but… life man.

So, as I said five years ago, I like to let you see the writer behind the words so get ready for a long explanation of the last year of my life. I have spoken about my high-risk pregnancies in past posts, and the struggles those presented. Well… after my final baby came into this world, I thought those troubles were behind me. I picked up the writing mantle hard in Jan of 2023 once my youngest was old enough to allow me some free time. I had lofty publishing goals. I labeled 2023 as ‘My Year’ and vowed to focus on my writing again.

It was a wonderful idea in an ideal world. But life had other plans for me.

My final pregnancy triggered an auto-immune disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This means, my immune system attacks my joints, slowly breaking them down. This causes extreme pain. It all began in May of 23, when I first went to the doctor to have them looked at. By the end of 2023, my wrists were becoming almost unbearable. It took about 8 months to finally get the diagnosis all figured out, and writing was very painful, near impossible. So just before Christmas 2023, I was given the news. And it hit me… hard. It’s incurable and I’m in my early 30’s. I wasn’t expecting it, to be honest. I’m a healthy person overall. But once I got the diagnosis, I started medication. Which took four months to begin working on limiting the pain.

Which led me into the spring, when the pain was dialed down and I started hitting editing and writing hard. Preparing for my book releases. When… my eyes went.

I ended up needed emergency retina surgery on both eyes this past spring. It was… insane and completely unexpected. I had weeks of required downtime where I could not even roll over. Then, still, another month of no computer screens. And still today, even 2.5 months out after the final surgery, I am not fully back up to my norm. Vision is not fully stabilized and migraines are my biggest enemies now. Long story short, they had to place something around my eye to anchor my retina in place and I had some complications in the healing process, most likely due to my autoimmune disease.

But, I am getting back into it now. I write because I love it, not strictly as a job. I love this because not only do I find writing therapeutic; it allows me to stay home with my children while they are little. But it does mean I need to get my butt in gear if I plan to start hitting my self set deadlines.

So, plan for the rest of 2024! I am going to work my tail off for three new releases this year. And pray no more curveballs are sent my way.

I really want to get Golon’s Book, His Mate, published. I have had some questions about if there will ever be more of this series and I promise it’s coming. Golon’s book picks up where The Mated Queen left off and follows Marilee and Golon as they tackle the problem of the finite supply of tatio. Last year, I began posting all my backlog onto Kindle Vella as a means to motivate myself, and it worked! But, that is not the final draft. But it is available on that platform as a completed story. New scenes and additional edits will be made before it goes to long form, but all the same. I know many readers have probably abandoned this ship, and that’s alright. I get it. But it’s coming. Editing is a long process, especially when the book turned out as long as His Mate has. So I’m not sure when to even promise this book. But my goal is by the end of the year. I will update when I know more.

Blackmailed Marriage, my first dark billionaire romance, is complete and ready for editing and to be pushed to long form. It is a genre I became obsessed with, began releasing on Kindle Vella, and it had quite a large response. So it moved up on the chopping block. I am not going very ‘dark’ here, more ‘grey’ but still… read only if this genre is something you like. I would be surprised if I don’t get this one published within the next handful of months. It’s finished, just needs to go off to the editor for polishing.

Last year, when everything was running smoothly, I foolishly agreed to join a ‘Snowed In’ multi author book release for November of this year. So I have a Christmas romance book planned for a November release. I really don’t want to end up backing out of this, so I am working hard to get that one done. Manuscript is close, but it will be a lot of work to get it finished. It’s my goal though.

Well, there you have it. All my plans and best intentions. I am still here, writing away, I always endeavor to update on here, my email subscribers, and my socials whenever there is a new book ready. But, writing is my therapy, so sometimes I just write…

Anyways, thank you all for still being here. Indie Author Life means I wear many hats… and they fall off sometimes.

Happy Reading!

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A New Outlook on Being a Writer: The Struggle of Fighting a Flaw

October 18, 2018 emjaye11

Hello Everyone!

It has been a while since my last post, I have been deep in the Gelder world…book three is off for another round of editing and on schedule for a November release! Almost here. I feel like it is some of my best work and I cannot wait for all of you to read it.

Also, I am excited to announce that I will be starting a small short stories edition here on my blog that will be free! It is going to be called Gelder Shorts and will contain scenes with characters from the Gelder books, stand alones in their own right but will also add to the Gelder storyline of the book that you can purchase on Amazon. I will be working on the first installment and then posting it shortly!

Now back to my new outlook of being a writer, like I said in my last post, I am a very stubborn person. This stubbornness is actually what led me to becoming an author after a lifetime of dreaming about it. I did promise more detail on what exactly happened in my pregnancy so here it is.

In the last stage of my pregnancy, I was really struggling, but I refused to admit it. Even though I was so swollen that my doctor said: “We may have to cut off the ring!” when I asked her about my wedding ring and my concerns that I could not get it off, I shrugged off my worries. Along with gaining thirteen pounds in a week, having severe nausea and headaches, I still said everything was fine.

Once my water broke, and agonizing hours in the delivery room, it was discovered that I had severe preeclampsia and was stuck in the hospital for five days! If I had only reached out to my mother, or any handful of friends who had been through labor already, I would have been able to get the help I needed before it got as bad as it did.

That very stubbornness led me to go back to work early, even though I was still dizzy when walking and still could not control my blood pressure. I ignored the blatant signs that I was suffering from postpartum depression, I was not eating when separated from my baby, not sleeping, and every day I felt a little bit worse than the day before.

Finally, I couldn’t keep putting on a brave face, and I collapsed in the classroom, terrifying some twelve-year-olds. One moment I was describing the grading rubric for their solar system projects and the next I was crashing to the floor.

All because I was stubborn… And it did not end there. I am still stubborn, even now a year later and I still refuse to ask for help. But I am trying! But flaws are fickle, even when we win the hard battle of admitting we have them, changing is an uphill battle.

Right now, my gut reaction to any suggestion of help is… No, I am fine! Even when I am not. After spending a fantastic day with my one-year-old, I feel so tired some days, but the writing muse is still hard upon me. I end up writing in the wee hours while the house sleeps… Who needs more than three hours of sleep anyway?!

But enough of this poor me complaining! Thank you all for reading about me, and look for the first edition of Gelder Shorts!

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A New Outlook on Being a ‘Writer’

June 1, 2018 emjaye11

Hi Everyone!

In addition to being an author and creating new and exciting worlds for you to enjoy, I decided to share a little bit of my own real world with you. As writers we tend to delve deep into the fiction with our audience and leave out the important parts of our lives that led us into being writers in the first place. I am about to get pretty real with you all on what path has brought me to fulfilling my life long dream of writing my own novels.

If you haven’t already I strongly recommend you read my books, which can be found on Amazon! Of course I am biased on their quality but I truly feel like they are a strong story line and filled with heroes that are flawed like the rest of us.

But are flaws a bad thing? I mean really? Have you ever met a perfect person? I know I haven’t and you know what? I don’t want to. They sound BORING. I know I am flawed. And because of these flaws, I am the person I am today. Because of these very flaws, I am an author.

So you might be wondering how flaws led me into writing a book… and not a self help book either but a full fledged 65000 word novel with another 80000 word novel soon to be released. Well…. let me tell you.

My biggest flaw? Ask my husband any day of the week and he will tell you it is that I am stubborn to my core. I think I can take on the entire stinking world without any help. Because of this fateful flaw I decided that I would move across the state at eight months pregnant, ignoring the many signs I had that maybe my pregnancy was having some difficulties. I started a new job, took on increasingly difficult tasks all while steadily declining in health.

It was this same stubbornness that prevented me from seeking a second opinion when my new doctor told me ‘everything is fine’ and I was just pregnant. Well… everything wasn’t fine and I learned in labor exactly what my body was trying to tell me. That particular story is for a later blog post though since it would take way to long to do it justice here.

You would think that this would have opened my eyes right? WRONG! After nine weeks of continued struggles with dizziness, loss of appetite, and overall fatigue I decided that I was ready to return to work instead of taking the allotted twelve weeks. Why you ask? Because as I said I am stubborn to my very core. I did not feel like I could miss anymore work (more on that later) and by golly I was going back and woe be to anyone who tells me no!

What did this all lead to? Four weeks into returning to my job as a science teacher I passed out in front of a room full of forty twelve year olds and my body straight up decided to scream at me “YOU ARE NOT ALRIGHT” and I finally had to listen. I took the time I needed to recover, but at that point months had gone by and I was at a loss of what to do with myself.

Then I stumbled upon a blog. A blog that by all rights was very simple and I can’t even remember how I found it. But that blog inspired me to put the characters in my head on to the page. If I had never found that blog and read about how to self publish I would not be here today, telling you about my journey.

It is because of that blog that I have decided to write my own blog. To let readers of my books, along with the rest of the world, read not only about my fictitious characters, but about the real me as well. A lot of what I post will be about my writing and the mishaps I had as a first time indie author, but there is also going to be quite a bit about my family, my struggles, and oh yeah… my many faults.