That picture pretty much sums up my writing life these days. The stories are there, always, constantly playing out in my mind, but typing them down...it's not happening. For the past fews years, I've regularly released a book every few months. Now, with my last book, Demon Prince, having been released in March, for the first time in an extremely long time, I don't have anything lined up or even in the works to be released. The reason? Several. I'm not going to explain all of them, we'd be here all day, but because of my past consistency, I felt I at least owed my readers an update that I've found myself on an unexpected hiatus from writing.
A few months ago, a personal loss hit me. It knocked the wind out of me and made me start to reevaluate some things. This combined with ever shrinking royalty checks, the pressure of publishing, the stress of struggling to find any spare minute I could to write while trying to raise my son, work my day job, and my increasing disenchantment with the publishing industry i.e. distributors stealing from authors, publishers stealing from authors, pirates stealing from authors...all compounded to where I just stopped.
Counting from when my first short story was published to now, I've been a published author for ten years, and the industry is hardly recognizable from what it was when I started. There's a lot more vitriol and a lot less money. And no, it's not all about money, but that is kinda important. That, along with instead of looking forward and excited to sit down and write, you feel anxiety over it, well, that shows there's a problem somewhere. There comes a point where you have to assess, is the stress and time spent writing worth the endgame of publishing a book? I'm not even sure that question has a true answer. It'll be different for every author, and the answer could probably change at any given point in their life. I just know in my life, in these recent months, I've had to step away.
To everyone who has supported my work, I'm grateful. When a reader opens their mind and lives to the words of an author, there's no greater gift. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.