One Saturday morning, I found myself reminiscing over my life’s writing adventures and successes. As a child, writing became an outlet and escape from life’s challenges and hardships. My fears, sorrows, passions, and joys bled out into the pages of my journals like words spilling from my heart. As soon as I could write, I created little fantasy stories, which I bound together with craft paper and yarn into little makeshift paperbacks. I was so proud of my creations. I remember dreaming about writing a real book one day.

My first published work was a magazine article I wrote about my personal experience with the local farm working community and social justice. I poured my maturing heart into that piece and brought it to the Sonoma County Peace Press. The journalist and content producer read it while I waited and was brought to tears in front of me. My article was published in the very next issue in August of 2000. The emotion and community response it produced sparked my passion for writing for the betterment of humanity and the world.

It wasn’t until 2016 at 37 years old that I self-published my debut novel, The Beauty in Darkness: A Vampire Story. It began as a story that had been spinning around in my head for a long while. It wasn’t exactly meant to be a published book, but I realized the story wanted to be told, and I enjoyed the adventure that enfolded before me. I didn’t have an organized outline, just a chaotic assembly of images and words that seemed to write themselves onto the screen. So, I decided to let them, and I fell in love with the world my mind created.

I realized other people might enjoy the adventure too, and so I sent the manuscript to an editor. He gave me some great tips and advice for edits, and I took them. I made all the needed changes and sent it back for polishing. Then I reached out to a book cover artist company with my own artistic cover idea. I was more than pleased with the fruition that came from that vision, and I unleashed my book on the Amazon platform. Soon after, I reached out to my local newspaper, The Press Democrat, and was lucky enough to reach a fellow self-published author who was a content producer there. She agreed to check out my book, and thankfully enjoyed it. She published a 4-star review in the book section of the Sunday paper!

After a few years of dabbling in writing for a small magazine, unsuspected fans of my debut novel convinced me to make it into a series, and I wrote and published the sequel, The Beauty in Darkness: A New Race. Readers really enjoyed that one, too, and so I decided to turn it into a trilogy. I also decided to translate the books into Spanish myself with the help of online digital translation tools and my BA in Spanish under my belt. I sent it to an editor in Spain who did an amazing job, and he even formatted the Kindle version. Then I had my original book cover artist remake the same cover in Spanish. I published the first Spanish edition, LA BELLEZA EN LA OSCURIDAD: UNA HISTORIA DE VAMPIROS on Amazon in 2022.

That same year, I entered one of my dystopian short stories, The Irony of Everything, into a writing contest at Something or Other Publishing. It won the grand prize in the dystopian category! My story was published in their book, Winners: A Compilation of Award-winning Short Stories.

Outside of working as a full time healthcare professional, I am currently writing, however slowly, the third and final book in the trilogy, The Beauty in Darkness: Time or Immortality, and also translating Book 2 into Spanish. I also plan to include my winning dystopian short story in a future compilation of short stories book I am working on.

Many authors write as a career that is a significant or sole source of income. For me, it is mostly a pastime and something that brings me a sense of accomplishment and reward. If my stories leave people with a little more joy and light in a sometimes dark and chaotic world, that’s all I can ask for. Making a little money from my books and short stories is also pretty cool! But as a small-time author with only 4 books out, it can be difficult to earn sales. I spend very little time and money on marketing via mostly my social media platforms and several book promotion companies. My main goal has always been to spread joy and peace of mind to readers as far as I can reach, and hopefully even appeal to different perspectives. We are all human, after all.

What I am most proud of is the outreach and positive response my books have received all over the world. With only a few thousand dollars spent on marketing over the course of the last 8 years, and the little energy spent creating artistic social media posts on various platforms, my vampire series has had 29,100+ downloads, 500+ Kindle and paperback sales, and over 131,800 Kindle pages read. My 260+ reviews and ratings holding an average of 4+ stars overall are almost entirely organic. I never look for or pursue false praise for my books, because I cherish honesty and integrity. I work hard at good quality writing and interesting storytelling, and want my books to truly shine, something that all types of people can enjoy. I love bringing people of all life perspectives into my creative world. All I hope for is that my books and short stories leave a meaningful impression in the minds of all who decide to embark on a journey with my characters.

Link to my Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01IJCN0M0