Ah, the day is upon us my friends. Today, instead of get­ting up at 7 AM to get ready for work, I had the choice of sleep­ing in…after all, this is the first day of being self-employed. The first day of being a full-time writer.

Ahh, lucky you, you say. And yes, I know I’m lucky. Lucky that I have such a loyal and slightly rabid fan­base, lucky that I’ve not given up when the going got tough, lucky that I had sup­port from my fam­ily and friends. I’m lucky that I can do what I love for a living.

Does this mean it’s an easy life from now on? HELL NO. As any free­lancer will tell you, once you take away the “secu­rity” of a “nor­mal” job, every dol­lar com­ing in and dol­lar going out has more mean­ing. As in, OH MY GOD WHAT IF I NEVER SELL ANOTHER BOOK I’LL DIE AND BE HOMELESS.

Of course, if we lis­tened to these valid fears, no one would ever take the leap. So here I am, leap­ing off the cliff and build­ing my wings on the way down. It’s going to be a chal­leng­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing jour­ney at times but you know me — I love being scared.

This is a time to develop solid writ­ing habits, to put my nose to the key­board and grind words out. I have more free­dom now but that free­dom is teth­ered to my writ­ing, some­thing that will always have to come first. This will prob­a­bly result in many people’s fallen and con­fused faces when I tell them I can’t go to their party because I need to write or I can’t go on a trip because I need to go through edits, or I can’t go for din­ner because I’m upload­ing to Kin­dle. Most peo­ple will prob­a­bly think I can do what­ever I want, and while I can, it doesn’t mean I should.

This morn­ing I had the free­dom and choice to sleep in. My first day of self-employment, I’m my own boss, right?

Right. But I’m a bitch of a boss.

So instead of wak­ing up at 7AM for work like I would have done on a week­day, I woke up at 5AM to write.

That’s right. First day as a full-time writer and I’m up at 5AM. Hope­fully this kind of behav­iour will get me a raise in the long run

In other news, well actu­ally the same news, I AM writ­ing. This month has been crunch month for The Devil’s Metal. It’s a whole new ball­game and it’s not easy. Writ­ing EIT is sec­ond nature to me. Five books and three novel­las and I can spew about Perry and Dex in my sleep.

But start­ing a whole new book with whole new char­ac­ters, plot and world (not to men­tion time period) is some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. This is keep-you-on-your –toes, chal­leng­ing stuff. You’re wor­ried about pac­ing, you’re wor­ried about keep­ing the time period authen­tic, you’re wor­ried that peo­ple won’t love your char­ac­ters as much as they love your tried-and-tested char­ac­ters. You worry you will suck. Balls. BIG BALLS.

All I can do, how­ever, is keep going. I will try to keep those voices at bay and I will try my best. This isn’t Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror and it’s not try­ing to be (THOUGH EIT fans will notice one sim­i­lar thread/item in The Devil’s Metal hee hee). This is strictly adult. It’s the 1970’s. It’s rock and roll. It’s about per­sonal demons and real demons. It’s about two peo­ple com­ing together in a very unlikely way. And know­ing me, this isn’t main­stream, insta-luv fare. Oh, there are plenty of sexy times and romance, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not stan­dard. That’s all I can really say.

Although I’ll also say, man, get­ting up at 5AM is a bitch.