I never thought I would become an author. Writing was something that I did, but it was just something that I did because I wanted to put the things that happened in my head on paper. I never thought that it would come out as published books, that other people would read and review them, or even that I would learn about the book publishing industry in the process.  

My interest in writing stories has always been closely tied to the ones that I read or heard as a child. Fairy tales, in particular, fascinated me with the weird twists that they had, the gruesome deaths, the horrifying acts that people would commit, and sometimes just straight-up cruelty, which most of the ones that we know today do not have. It was definitely a part of my writing process growing up.  

That darker side of fairy tales became a big part of my own writing when I started to write my own stories.  

When I started writing, I thought about what would happen if those familiar fairy tales were placed outside of their familiar atmosphere and turned into something much darker. Instead of writing them as a basis for a fairy tale, I wanted to take their skeletons and place them in a much bloodier setting.  

That is when I started working on what would eventually become my first book.  

The process of writing the book was not always easy. Some stories came out more easily than others, and there were definitely parts where I had to stop and rethink what I had done before. A story can be one thing in your head, but it can end up being something completely different on the page, and sometimes the version that you thought was great is not the version that ends up working for the book.  

I also learned that I like to take familiar things and make them unpleasantly familiar, but without losing them entirely. A reader might know the fairy tale that inspired a story but will not find the ending that they might have expected. That is part of what makes stories interesting to me. 

The actual writing was only one part of the process. 

When I decided to publish the book, I learned that there was an entirely different universe on the other side of the manuscript. I had to learn about formatting, printing, distribution, ISBNs, covers, reviews, promotion, and everything else that an author suddenly has to learn when they decide that the manuscript has to leave their computer and become an actual book. Some of these things were much less complicated than they sounded, but others were much more complicated, and I learned that a manuscript that looks wonderful on a computer screen can end up being completely unusable when it has to be printed. There were definitely parts where I questioned if I had somehow taken up multiple different jobs at once.  

Publishing the book also taught me something completely new to me, which was its readership. 

When you spend so much time writing a story, you become incredibly familiar with it. You know the characters, the scenes, the events that took place, the choices that they made, and even the parts that never ended up in the book. When someone else reads the book, they only see what you put on the page.  

Thus, it can be exciting but also terrifying at the same time. 

They might have seen something in the book that you did not expect, liked a character that you did not think was interesting, or they might even have disliked a section that you thought was your best work. The same person might have a completely different reaction to another book that you write. I have learned that this is part of the process. Once a book is out, people will start to read it, and they will bring their own opinions and ideas to it. 

 The reaction that I have gotten from readers has also encouraged me to continue writing.  

My first book was not meant to be the end of my writing, and I have continued to write dark fairy tales and horror stories because there were so many different things that I wanted to explore. My second collection continues with similar themes, but I have started working on a different book as well.  

Each new manuscript teaches me something different.  

I see things in my writing now that I did not before. I focus more on the pacing, on the dialogue, the sentences, and whether the scenes are doing what I want them to do. I have also learned to accept that maybe something that I have written did not work as well as I wanted it to.  

Perhaps it is the most important lesson that I have learned as a writer.  

What my journey as a writer has also taught me is that I have delved into many of the areas of publishing that I did not think that I would when I started. Independent publishing, getting my books to reviewers, and even looking into literary representation have all shown me different sides of being an author, and each one has given me a new lesson.  

I also still see myself as a storyteller above everything else.  

The publishing side is important because it gets the stories out there, but the reason why I write is that I have more ideas that I want to turn into stories, and I want to explore more fairy tales that I know and that have interesting twists behind them, which is probably something that started my journey as a writer in the first place