What I never knew I needed.

So a while back, I'm talking 4-5 years ago, I became 2 people. I was me, the author, and me, the online event planner. Truth be told, more people knew me as the Release Day Diva haha. It was such a fun time in my life too, always different. I met so many amazing people and overall had so much fun.

But then, as things do, things shifted. Events weren't as fun to plan and host, and my personal life became more complicated with fertility treatments and being a mom to a young child. So I hung up my event planning hat. And for a while, I hung up my author hat too. Writing stopped being fun. It became the job I felt like I had to do and no longer wanted to.

I took almost a full year off and just enjoyed being me. The mom, and the wife. I laughed with friends, read tons of amazing books, and just got to be for a while. Then something happened....I realized I missed my little book family. I missed the camaraderie of writing with others. Mostly, I missed cheering my fellow authors on from the sidelines, or next to them in the trenches.

So, I decided to start up my writing boot camps again. In my head it would be a fun way to dip my toe back into the whole crazy writing world again. So I did just that. I opened the page back up, and ran a few week long boot camps. Those ladies brought me back to life, no lie. Cheering them on, and seeing them succeed, it brought me to life again. So Kim, Tiffany, and Belinda, I thank you for that!!

What now? What did I do now that I had the desire to start writing again? I'll tell you! I gave myself permission to write what I wanted, and not chase the "hot genre" anymore. I'm sure you can imagine how stressful it can be to always be looking at the charts and seeing what's hitting. It's no way to live!

That's what I've been doing, writing for me. And I've had more fun in the last 4 months than I've had in years! My advice to any of you is to follow your passion. If your passion is Contemporary Romance, write it! PNR? Write it!! Readers will feel it in your pages, I promise!!

Ok, so now a little bit more about the boot camps....I had to figure out what I was going to do with it all, so I became an author coach! What does that mean? Well, in a nutshell it means I'm here to help. I still offer the boot camps, but now I offer more intensive coaching. This is where you get daily one on one help. I help you set up a realistic schedule and motivate you to stick to it. I give advice on plot issues and flow, and later on who to use for editing and fomatting as well as promo.

I never realized what being a cheerleader meant to me, until I stopped doing it. Never again will I do that. I challenge you all to find that in your life, the one thing you would be miserable without. Once you know what it is, your job is to nurture it.