The Method to my Madness

The last time I published a blog post was back in December 2022.
It's been almost a year, you can tell I'm not great at maintaining a blog. To be honest, for a while I wasn't too great at maintaining myself, let alone a blog or a website.

I guess what brings me here now is knowing that very soon a day I have been dreaming of for years is fast approaching...
Since removing Origin from Amazon (what had been the very first draft of book one in the Jackson J Tales) after deciding I wanted to completely rewrite it, I have been working my arse off on different stories.

Let me start by explaining WHY I removed Origin from the marketplace.

• It was the first unedited draft of book one of The Jackson J Tales - and for authors out there reading this, yes, I have to live with that mistake for the rest of my life. Because they know better than anyone to NEVER release a first draft of anything as a final draft. In my defense, I was young, inexperienced, had no sustinable income at the time to afford an editor who could help me shape this story. I was too eager. My bad.
• My second reason: I ended up finding myself an editor while I was working on book two of the JJ Tales who helped me through multiple drafts and revisions of book 2, which had become incredibly DIFFERENT from the world I had created in book one (Origin). So I had decided that I had to rewrite book one to shape it into the world I had dicovered in book 2. (Yes...believe it or not, I wrote in REVERSE order - and I'm NEVER doing it again lol

So, it took a few years for me to get book 2 completely written which reached over 200K words. So here I was, with book two done, full edited, polished. Then there was the ship wreck of Origin which needed a miracle. So I painstakingly began re-writing Origin (now named Pirate's Vow).
In the end, it also fell in the 200K word count even after two revisions. That's a big book....biiiig.
So, I decided to split the book into two. Stay with me now.
Kindle Direct Publishing won't accept manuscripts over 828 pages, so yeah...I had to split it. Which explains the cliff hanger ending too. 
And guess what? Yeah...book two had to be split too.
So here I am having to make big adult decisions, and I'm happy with the decisions, don't get me wrong! It's just adulting is hard lol
I should also add that in between writing these books, I took a break to work on writing other projects in order to not overwork my brain...so I dabbled in trying contemporary romance, which I did really enjoy and still do but for personal reasons I chose not to publish the WIP I had spent a good couple years on.

Life happened. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression and had two breakdowns in two years, I was at my lowest point in my life, I deactivated my social media accounts, I dropped contact with friends, I was off work, I honestly shut myself away from everyone and everything and just didn't want to exist any more (thankfully I had my mother and a few close friends I could trust to remind me that they were waiting on the other side for me). Honestly, it was a dark place and time for me and I learnt a lot about myself.

It took a lot to claw my way out of this coffin of despair, took even longer for me to swim to the surface and finally draw in breath and come back to reality. By the time I could breathe again, I felt like I had to re-integrate back into the world. It was the scariest, hardest thing to do. Being afraid of being judged by co-workers, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a shadow of myself and not the person I used to be. It was hard and painful. 
And during all of that, not once had I written. Nor had the urge to write. I'd lost my passion, my drive, my creativity. And for a while I resented myself for losing my gift.
But then one day...I found breadcrumbs. I followed them and found that my old self had left me clues and reminders of myself. I know it all sounds crazy but the good news is...I'm here.

It was this year January when I resurfaced. I went on a self love journey (which I'm still going through), re-connected with my faith and felt the desire to write. That's when I found my way back to Pirate's Vow and dedicated months to finally getting it out into the world. And HERE WE ARE!

The only social media platforms I currently use would be Instagram and Pinterest (sometimes). I find social media to be quite toxic so I've decided to not re-activate my other accounts for my own mental wellbeing. So if you ever want news on upcoming books in the JJ Tales and you have insta, feel free to give me a follow! 

Pirate's Vow is now due to release on November 3rd 2023! And I am super excited!! Yay!!

I can't wait to share this with you all! I'm so proud of how far it's come!

The point of me sharing all of the above with you is so that I could offer an explanation as to where I've been, why I've been quiet, just 'why' for any reader who asks it.
But also I hope that this post reaches someone who is or has been struggling for a while mentally, physically or creatively. I hope that they are left with some hope that whatever storms you're facing, you'll come out of it alive. You'll piece yourself back together eventually. And if you do have something you've dreamt of doing, you'll get the courage and strength to do it - I believe in you.

And if curiousity ever gets the best of you, then maybe you may even find yourself reading Pirate's Vow and getting stuck in the madness with me! 

Either way, I'm glad to be back, and in action.

With love,
Sab Xx
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