Five years ago today, I published my very first title! It was not (as some of you might assume) The Faerie Guardian. No, it was actually only the first part of The Faerie Guardian. And that’s because when I first came up with the Creepy Hollow idea, I intended for the whole series to be published as an ebook serial. i.e. a whole bunch of short instalments instead of several novels. I was planning on doing about twelve instalments that would make up the storyline that now spreads across the first three Creepy Hollow novels.

Blog post on launch day of my very first title!

In 2012, I managed to get to the end of the first four instalments (Guardian, Labyrinth, Traitor and Masquerade) before deciding that not only did I prefer the novel form in terms of length and structure of a story, but I also wanted to have an actual, real book I could hold in my hands instead of short ebooks I could only hold on my ereader. So I decided to put those first four instalments together into one novel, and that’s what became The Faerie Guardian. (If you look through it, you’ll see the story is separated into Parts I to IV. Well, that’s where the parts came from 😀 )

The four novelettes that went on to make up The Faerie Guardian

2013 was my first year as a full-time author. Not because I was raking in the royalties (ha! The Faerie Guardian wasn’t selling nearly enough copies for that!), but because I’d just got married and moved to a new town, and I couldn’t find a teaching job (I’d been working as a mathematics teacher for the previous three and a half years). So I saw that as God closing one door and opening another, and I decided to embrace the opportunity. After all, it was what I’d been wanting for a long time. So I gave myself one year in which to make the author thing work. If, by the end of 2013, I wasn’t making at least a teacher’s salary from my books, then I would have to find a way to go back to teaching.

The awesome news? Creepy Hollow books 1, 2 and 3 were doing well enough by the end of 2013 for me to happily continue as a full-time author 😀

The original three Creepy Hollow book covers

On to 2014 … I was kind of mentally exhausted after finishing a fantasy trilogy, so I felt like I needed a break to write something totally different. Light-hearted contemporary romance ideas had been playing around at the back of my mind, so I decided to go with that. I planned four books: The Trouble with Flying, The Trouble with Flirting, The Trouble with Faking and The Trouble with Falling. I managed to get the first three done by the end of 2014, and by the end of that year, I was more than ready to return to fantasy. I missed Creepy Hollow!!

Although readers might not have known it, Calla’s story had been roughly planned out in my mind since I was busy with the very first Creepy Hollow book. I didn’t know for certain that I would write more than three books, but I wanted to leave my options open. So it was exciting, at the beginning of 2015, to solidify my plans for not only Creepy Hollow books 4, 5 and 6, but also 7, 8 and 9! I walked back into the Creepy Hollow world, and 2015 saw the publication of A Faerie’s Secret and A Faerie’s Revenge. (And the first three books received a cover makeover 😀 )

In 2016 I then finished Calla’s story with the sixth Creepy Hollow book, A Faerie’s Curse, as well as publishing two novellas featuring Creepy Hollow side characters, Scarlett and Raven. AND I finally finished the Trouble series with The Trouble with Falling! Whew! (And both my siblings got married. It was a super busy year!)

So here we are, five years later in March 2017, with the publication of book 7, Glass Faerie, coming up next month. And hopefully, before the year is out, Creepy Hollow books 8 and 9!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO’S SUPPORTED ME (AND CONTINUES TO SUPPORT ME) ALONG THE WAY!! 😀

Marking the Occasion with a MASSIVE Creepy Hollow Discount!

Six Creepy Hollow novels for only 99¢!

AMAZON / iBOOKS / NOOK / KOBO