When you’re a writer, everyone always asks the same old boring questions: How long have you been writing for? What do you write? What inspired your story?
I can answer all three questions with three simple words: Forever, Everything, and Life. But to expand, and not to bore you, my first published piece was a poem about dragons in my school newsletter, when I was five years old. Since then, I certainly hope I have improved as a writer. A few awards and hundreds of independent book sales have convinced me I’m doing OK. But, like every writer I have a day job. I work mostly in customer service and marketing, and that’s really what keeps the lights on. So, when you write a book that hits different, and gains more success than you could dream of… you feel like everything is about to change. That’s what happened when I released my sci-fi thriller, Astraeus. It broke into amazon's bestselling science-fiction lists, alongside titles such as James SA Corey's The Expanse and Frank Herbert's Dune. Hundreds of copies sold within weeks, and readers began contacting me to ask for a sequel. I couldn’t quite believe how well it did, especially after the little success of my debut novella (three years prior).
What did I do, you might ask? I wrote the sequel of course. What else can you do when so many people demand a less ambiguous ending? And I must admit, it was hard to write. The inspiration just wasn’t there. It was all work and no play. But I did it, and I released book two of The World Settlers Duology: Eternum, in January of 2023. I learnt a lot from this experience. Firstly, inspiration does not “shine through” your work. In fact, people seemed to enjoy the sequel even more than the first book (as far as reviews are concerned). So, there really is something to the work-ethic philosophy of Stephen King. Stop waiting for inspiration and just write. But I also learnt that even best-sellers don’t keep the lights on. Here I am, working my day job, grinding out my next book. This one isn’t about a world-settling starship in the middle of the galaxy, with a dying colony and no hope of survival… No. This one is about a thirteen year old and his pet hamster on an adventure in a fairy-tale land, with a friendly dragon and a rotten witch. Because sometimes, inspiration trumps hard work.
