Why I wanted to be an author

Pre-sale for my debut fantasy novel Dynasty Codes: Origin Curse is beginning, and of course I'm feeling reflective and a little sentimental. Author. Finally. I've had this dream since I was a little girl, and life and my perfectionism and anxiety got in the way. I'm breaking all those barriers now, and finally it's happening. Now it is, I thought I'd share with you all why I wanted to be an author. It's been a long time coming.

Starting from the beginning. I don't know when this dream became my dream. It's been there as long as I could remember. According to my dad, as long as I could read, which was very young. I was raised in a house that adored books, and I was a fortunate child to have parents that read to me often and encouraged stories and fun games.

I mirrored that. While I never got on with my little sister much, sadly, one thing we did enjoy was the time we shared a bedroom when we were really tiny, and when the lights went out and parents told us to sleep, instead we'd sit up in bed, and in the night of the nightlight (because I was scared of the dark), my sister would ask me to act out plays and stories with her teddies.

Of course, her teddies were the good guys, and mine were the bad guys. Had to be that way with a younger sibling. I used to whisper to mine, 'Don't worry, I know you're not bad, really!'

I was too sensitive a kid.

Was? Correction. Still am.

Always scribbling stories on scraps of paper, I used to make little books in drawing time or at home and show my friends and family. Literally, it's all I wanted to be in life. As I got older, the idea formed more as to why.

Why be an author? Because it was fun, and stories were amazing and magical, and I loved magic. I could daydream and imagine so much with books and stories, and go on so many adventures that I couldn't go on in real life, and I wanted to make that too. For others to read and, honestly, for myself to read.

You know they say to write the book you want to read.

Honestly, too, I was really ill as a kid. I couldn't go out much. Sometimes could barely move. So books were often my only reality and friends when I was stuck within the 4 walls of home or the hospital. Now, I don't want this to sound like a sob story. As an introvert, I REALLY loved my own company, and there was nothing better than a good fantasy story. So while I hated that part of my life--being ill, that is--I'll never regret the time it gave me with books.

I know there are other people like that out there, who for whatever reason can't or prefer not to go out, instead relying on books for adventure, fun, stories, company.

I was the girl who characters were more real and more friends to me than real people, and I know there are other people like that too.

I wasn't interested in boys or crushes until VERY late, and even then my grey/demi self was pretty neutral. But, of course, I had my fair share of fiction book crushes.

... Had? ...

I laugh now, as it clearly didn't happen, but I remember seven-year-old me deciding her goal was to be the world's youngest author.

Well, little me, it took another 22 years. Sorry. That's life, that's anxiety, but it's not about the time you did it, just that you finally became true to yourself and did it.

I guess I could sum it up like this: books were my life, and they saved my life at a time it was dark and lonely. Many times. Not when I was just a kid.

If even one person can feel like that with a book I wrote--this one out now or any in the future--I'd feel so happy. Because I know how much it meant to me when I read books that made me feel that way, and to bring that colour and adventure to someone else is the most incredible gift ever.

Interested in Origin Curse? Check it out here.

Origin Curse

#authorlife #reflections #beinganauthor #whyIwrite

Coffee Break Thoughts: Fragility of Reality- Featuring Mt. Fuji!

I’m fortunate. I work in an office in Yokohama, Japan, so high that it has an incredible view of the city. And, not just that. If I look one way, I can see a part of the port. On the sunny days, the water glitters in the way that takes your breath away and inspires the deepest of reflection. If I look the other way, Mt. Fuji stands in her regal glory, crowned with white snow, like a sentry beside the mountain spine that surrounds this side of the city.

It’s impossible not to look at. And I do look at it, several times a day. It’s a most beautiful view for contemplation, mindfulness, and inspiration. I generally arrive first to the office, so I love to sit by the window and watch the world as I think about my intentions for the day.

It strikes me, then, as entirely baffling as to how the whole mountain spine, Mt. Fuji included, can sometimes altogether disappear.

On cloudy days, a blanket of clouds sits high enough that the city is in view, but the mountains are hidden. The whole horizon changes and it looks like the mountains were never there at all, just a city stretching out to the edge of our vision.

消えました！ (It’s disappeared!)

On such days, it is strange for me to look out of the window and find the things I love to look at completely gone, without a trace. How can such massive things, that stretch around the majority of the view from our window, be completely hidden?

It strikes me the fragility of what we know and come to get used to. When these things disappear, like Fuji-San and her mountain spine, it throws us, leaving an indescribable feeling of uncertainty.

I stare at that distance, looking for the mountains and the new horizon that has formed. It makes me think about the old beliefs that the world had an edge where, if we walked far enough, we could fall off into nothingness. On days like this, it really does look like there is an edge, with cloud cutting the horizon before the place our adjusted eyes know it should be.

The horizon is closer, it’s strange.

And the fragility of the reality that we know and adjust to is curious.

I know that by the end of today I will adjust to this mountain-less horizon, and when next I see Mt. Fuji I will be just as in awe as her as ever.

Then my routine mountain wonder and reflection can resume as usual, like all living things prefer: routine and normality.

Credit to Aunt Masako on Pixabay for her beautiful photo of Yokohama City and Mt. Fuji!

#horizon #adjustment #uncertainty #Humans #SerrenWrites #reflections #CoffeeBreakThoughts #Mind #reality #thoughts #fragility #contemplation #coffeebreak #mountains #MtFuji #Writing