Sami Saxton is on a short hiatus.
She did NOT arrive on Christmas Day, 2015 as promised.
Sami is not ‘gone for good,’ but merely on a leave of absence. But in the
spirit of transparency, I feel obliged to explain why?
If anyone is even remotely interested…
As a self-published, indie author, I felt it was
important for my ‘emerging author brand’ to regiment myself to a strict time schedule -- a deadline so to speak -- and pump out two works of fiction each and every year. I am
fortunate. I have two wonderful and engaging characters to draw ideas from... Sami
Saxton and Dan Hammer. Trust me, they provide me with enough alter ego material and story
lines to last, well, indefinitely. I hope. Then along came an idea last year to
explore a new concept, Aberrant, my Queer Diary Series, and my clock twisted.
In digging up the spiritual bedrock for Ellery Flynn -- my fictional sixty-seven
year old aging author -- I began uprooting core foundations of my own beliefs,
and the work took on a complex and completely different meaning for me, metamorphosing into what some call 'a labor of love.'
My deadline stalled.
Whose deadline was I on anyway?
I wasn’t signed to a major book publisher awaiting a lucrative
financial advance once the pages were submitted. I hadn’t secured a upper echelon Manhattan editor
who was calling me daily, inquiring about the work, my progress, preparing my
manuscript for advance galley copies to be sent out to the media in hopes of garnering
praise and adulation and book awards from top magazines and notable reviewers. Barnes
& Nobel and all the tiny little independent bookstores across the country weren’t
salivating to plop my current work into their NEW ARRIVAL bin, displaying the glitzy cover of my hardback copy in
a snazzy larger-than-life book dump at the entrance to their stores, in the hope of capturing last minute compulsive sales. I wasn't a notable brand, a household
name, or one of the coveted holiday release authors. Nope. That wasn’t me.
The truth was... I was on my own deadline.
A self-induced time-frame dictated by me to cast more
work into an already overburdened Amazon Universe and continue pushing-and-shoving
my creative career up a steep mountain that might not need so much pushing.
I digress…
By doing the daily disciplined work on Aberrant and keeping up with my strict regimen,
an act of transformation occurred. I suppose this is what all writers
hope to accomplish at some point in their work, their career, to create an authentic voice that speaks to the reader with honesty and courage and humanity.
In discovering Ellery William Flynn, I had
inadvertently recovered a lost part of myself. In creating his past, I somehow
tapped into my own. Once I completed Aberrant,
(on time, I might add) how disappointing to publish my new fabulous work and find no public
interest. My readers wanted my mysteries, my thrillers. They insisted I publish
books on the ravages of cold-blooded serial killers, not an aging gay author awakening
to life before his death. How depressing!
I learnt this lesson with Perfect, my third book in the Sami Saxton series. I wanted Sami to
have some respite after all the horrific things that had happened to her in her
previous books. I mean, c’mon! So I weaved an element of romance into her story line. (Or rather, Sami insisted.) How fortunate to have a best friend like Drew to whisk her away on a transatlantic cruise to Italy and to be charmed, and seduced and courted by an Italian hunk. And... I might add, how deviously fun for me, as the author, to be the
voyeuristic fly on the wall and take naughty dictation while Sami caroused
and danced and flirted around his charismatic advances. OMG! My readers were
distressed. Again! Why interrupt a good thriller with romance? Nobody cared.
The book languished in lousy sales. Even Kirkus
who offered Perfect a solid and
favorable nod failed to deliver devout Sami readership.
Therefore, in the middle of November, half way through
the new Sami Saxton novel, I stopped. My computer sat dormant on my desk, the
power turned off. I processed. I reflected. I sat back and thought about this
new place I was currently occupying. I took a vacation to New Orleans over the
Thanksgiving holiday. I ate and drank like southern royalty (and gained ten
pounds) and witnessed a wonderful lesbian wedding. When I returned to Los
Angeles, the same blank feeling persisted. Not entirely unwanted, I might add, just
different. I wrote in my journal, numerous times, in an attempt to process, again,
and try to understand my blankness of spirit. It wasn’t writer’s block I was
plagued with; in fact, I had the next several chapters already plotted out in
my head. I just didn’t think I wanted to write any more…
So I stopped.
And I took it all back… for me.
I chose to not be on a schedule. I stopped
the desperate hunger for sales and reviews, for precious nods and flirty winks
from publishing companies or eager agents cooing over my work. I ceased the quandary
over whether to advertise or not advertise, or to post an event on Goodreads or Facebook, or to be a
part of, or enlist in a ‘specific other author event,’ giving away merchandise, and Kindles, and
gift cards, in a bleak attempt to entice new readership to my webpage and sell one
more copy of one more of my books. I stopped marketing and shelling out cash to
an endless money trail of hope. The hope of believing in a dream -- my dream --
the dream, and obviously a Universal
dream, shared by most people with a working computer, half an idea, a fourth
grade framework on how to structure a sentence, and the romantic notion of becoming a
BESTSELLING AUTHOR. That dream scattered in the zeitgeist across a vast Amazon
Galaxy like fairy dust wanting nothing more than to sell books -- millions of books -- and
become the next Gillian Flynn of Gone
Girl fame.
I get it!
I remember my agent, the established and curmudgeonly one I acquired in NYC, the one who sold my first book to a publisher, had once said in an interview, “the most important advice I can give to any new writer
is… get a full time job in a restaurant.” He wasn’t kidding. I remember reading
that particular interview and being miffed. I had worked my entire life
in executive positions in the hospitality industry, and, I was currently employed in an amazing job, a position I loved in fact, in a posh restaurant, but what I wanted was the option to option out! Turn my
hobby into a career and my career into my hobby!
Right?
I stopped reading the endless success stories of how
independent authors (you know who you are) who had come before me and sold
MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of e-copies with their specific (pay me the money) secrets
on how “You Too Can Do the Same!” How you too can become the next Amanda Hocking or Colleen Hoover, or the Tracy Graves of the world, not to mention
E. L. James, that crafty and cunning woman who turned her little nighttime sex
blog into a lucrative association with major advances from a mega-six publishing
house and a Hollywood production company. Lets face it, the gods of readership
are slippery, if not fickle. Who knows what the next big ‘thing’ will be? It
could be trolls, or vampires one year, YA fantasy the next, witches, or hell, even queers on roller skates!
I had to look into my soul, reevaluate my intentions, my motivation, and be completely honest
with myself, not always an easy task. Before publishing my first book, I wrote for
validation; the like me, love me, am I good enough?, pay me some attention, hear
my voice, hear me roar… routine. After the release of A PERFECT HUSBAND, a dot of confidence took up residence where once only insecurity had resided. Where I once
wrote only for the acceptance and approval of somebody, anybody, will you read my work, please?, now I was writing for myself. And I loved
it! It fueled me! It invoked a passion inside me that was new and exciting and
each day I woke with a hunger to get to my desk and create and build and ultimately
conquer the publishing world. I enjoyed the trust, the inner assurance, the determination I
experienced while listening to my characters dictate their unique voices and their solitary, sometime inhumane actions. It brought about a new and positive identity for me, an identity I had
rarely felt before in my life, especially one so particular as this, and I reveled in the shimmering glow of my newest
and obviously, soon-to-turn-lucrative passion.
Bingo!
I am a writer.
It is one of my many identities. To quit writing
allowed me the opportunity to catch up with myself, to take a breath and understand
the value of myself without writing, without the identity of wanting to be that
particular brand of writer that I
desired so doggedly, tattooed with blood on my heart and my monthly bank statements. It allowed me the necessary time off to feel
the restless and urgent need to get back to writing. Again. To bring back the passion of what writing invoked in me in the first place, in my heart, the
power of the words, the journey I committed to each time I set sail on a new
blank screen and started typing away on that sea of white. But more importantly, it
taught me about success, my own quiet success. It allowed me to do the work for
the sheer love of writing. For the continuous and ongoing love of the
characters -- my characters -- the ones created by me, the ones I choose to write about. It stopped being for the vapid flight of fame, or the glory, or the reviews, or the constant emotional disappointment
of not being relevant out there in a Universe overloaded in golden desires.
Perhaps my writing ultimately brought out the many identities and facets of
me. It brought me back to me, the good me, the autonomous me, with insight and maturity and enough hands-on-experience to allow this identity to remain a constant.
Sami Saxton is smiling. So is Dan Hammer. Even Ellery
Flynn. They all have some surprises up their sleeves in 2018…
For the time being, I
am listening… and taking dictation
