Okay Real Talk

This will be a bit of a long one, but we need to sit down and chat about something important. This had been bothering me for a while, and I’ve been keeping quiet as I worked through it.

If you've been following me on social media and/or my newsletter, I’ve been hinting at a secret project that I’ve been really excited about (next month!). It’s become a main priority not because of deadlines, but because of how much fun I’ve been having. That means my Oracle books have been put to the side. Well, there’s a little more to things than me simply enjoying one project over another.

Many authors have particular tenses they like to write (past, present, 1st pov, 3rd pov, etc…). Some can write in multiple combos they like, while others can’t. For me, past tense is a must. But along with that, 1st person is my natural state of writing. I love it. If I have a choice, I generally go for 1st person to write a book. However, around 2019, I decided to try and expand my ability by writing in 3rd person. I chose limited deep 3rd, as it was the closest to 1st as I could get to make the attempt easier. This is one reason why LFG and Oracle are written the way they are.

However, I didn’t achieve the results I was looking for. I thought if I wrote enough books this way, I’d get just as comfortable with them as I am with 1st person. But I never did.

As we know, it took me over a year of dedicated writing to finish BTE. This was the longest a book had ever taken me to write (Reborn came close). I assumed it was just because of all the stress I had going on in life, since Reborn also took me a while and I had a crap ton of life issues going on, but recently, as I’ve tried to work on the next Oracle book while working on my secret project, I realized it was more than that.

In 3 weeks, I finished the first book in my secret project. It’s a full novel length. On the shorter side of full length, but still full length. And yes, it only took me 3 weeks to write. That’s the fastest I’ve written this length of words in a long time.

I thought it might be just because I’m super excited about this project. But, I’m also really excited about Oracle. I want to write it. And yet, in 3 days, I could barely write half a page. And after some thinking and soul searching, and testing, I realized it came back to my decision to write the books in 3rd person.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about these books in 1st person. Then I have to convert it to 3rd as I jot things down. This slows me down for one, and it’s clear writing in 3rd isn’t getting easier for me. And I’ll be honest, it’s less fun. I love the stories, I just am not having as much writing them. I was able to prove this to myself by writing a scene from Prophecy of Unbroken Oaths in 1st person and it flowed so much easier.

And because of all this, I’ve come to a decision that I’ve had to wrestle with for a while.

I’m moving away from the 3rd person perspective writing.

I know this might not be something some people like hearing. We all have our reading preferences, and I totally understand if 1st person books aren’t your thing. However, in order to ensure I still enjoy my job, I can’t force something that isn’t working. Of course, this poses a few logistical issues with in-progress series.

LFG will be the easiest to address. Because each book is so self-contained (3 and 4 the only exceptions) switching to 1st person for Kiara and Darius’ book will be easy. It’ll start there and go for the remaining books. Nothing will happen to the books that are already out.

Oracle is a bit more complicated because it’s not self-contained like LFG. This means, if I move to 1st person, the books available need to be converted first before I can continue. Now is a perfect time to make this decision, since I only have one main story book and two shorter prequels. This type of conversion is time consuming, and not always a 1:1 replace as certain scene needs to be altered to make sense. And because I had the “brilliant” idea of naming my chapters, this change will require me to come up with more for POV switches. If I don’t just nix the title names altogether. We’ll see.

This change will slow down the release of book 2, as I don’t feel comfortable releasing book 2 before at least book 1 has been converted. I also don’t yet have a game plan how these changes will be forwarded to those who already own these books. Retailers are a pain about changes like this, so I’ll need to have a good long think. I will keep you informed as I go.

And that’s it for this big, long update of what’s been going on.