The Old Fears Creep Back

I'm having a hard time of things, lately.

Normally I can write something and finish it and share it and it's fine. I can take criticism, I can roll with the punches. It really does not bother me, hearing bad things about my work. Because I get it, I do: I'm an author, but I'm also a reviewer, so I understand the mindset of hating a book and ranting about it.

And I know that no matter what I do, no book I write, no matter how much I love it or how much anyone else loves it, is going to get bad reviews. So I should just write it.

But I'm also afraid.

A lot of the novels I've written are these happy, campy, entertaining books that don't take themselves too seriously and aren't all pretentiously artsy and deep. I have written books like that, don't get me wrong, but MOST of my books aren't like that. The thing is, right now I'm at a place in my writing where that's what I want it to write these fun entertaining books. Think Amanda Hocking or Rachel Hawkins; along those lines. But I also want to prove that I can do deep. That I can have moments of laugh-out-loud fun but still write stories that matter, stories with soul and emotion and that have something to say.

But for some reason it's not happening. The idea of writing just sounds so gross right now. I sit down to work and feel put-off and annoyed by it. I feel anxious and sort of depressed, which may be because I have anxiety and depression and am not on my medication right now, but may also not.

I don't know. I just need to have more confidence in myself. I need to sit down and just write and put everything out of my head, but I'm struggling with it.

It doesn't help that I want to work on so many different things. I think I've finally settled on a project today, a paranormal romance about faeries, and I'm excited about it, so hopefully I'll be able to just work through my frustrations by writing this manuscript. I recently finished the first draft of a novel about vampires that I want to publish, but it needs drastic editing that I'm not keen on doing right now. As in, rewrite the entire book editing.

Gah.

In other news, I've got no home internet. I've been sitting around reading and watching bad movies and doing nothing. My brother is in florida for two weeks, so having the house to myself all day is nice. And I've been spending a lot of time at my best friends house--I'm here right now, actually, listening to lorde and drinking mint tea while I write blog posts at 4 in the morning. So that's all good.

I hope I have something new to publish soon, and I do have some exciting shorter stories planned, so be on the lookout for news :)

The Face of Love is out in the world!

The face of love is out!

It's a literary short story and it's free on Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/523496

I plan to focus on longer works now, mostly novels, though I do have some novellas planned. I hope you all enjoy The Face of Love, and if you do read it, please remember to add reviews on Smashwords and Goodreads: word of mouth is HUGE for indie authors.

New Releases Postponed

Hi guys!

So remember when I said I had a bunch of projects in the works? Yeah, well it kind of all fell through.

See, I got cut open, severed an artery and a tendon, and now I'm stuck in a stupid cast and can barely type. Not fun.

I'll be all healed up and back to work in a month and a half or so, but even then I'll just be writing, not publishing right away. My next planned release is a YA novella called Blood of Midnight that subverts genre tropes, but since I can't write right now I'm gonna have to push back release.

HOWEVER! Night of the Dragon is being re-released early next month! If you'd like a free copy of the book, email me at OliverUrban@mail.com and I'll send you a digital ARC!