When you’ve been writing for a while and you’re open to mentoring, you get a lot of questions from other writers and from those just starting out and trying to get a grip on the many facets of writing and writing to sell books. It’s a privilege to share what you can, and few things are more thrilling than seeing an author with his or her first novel in her hands or being released.

Writers never forget that thrill and excitement. They never tire of seeing other writers experience it. And, just so you know, that thrill never goes away.  Well, I’m up to nearly forty books, and I still experience the thrill. It has shown no signs of dissipating, so I’m pretty certain it never goes away.

Yet I wondered.  Is the experience of the first book in today’s marketplace a lot different than it was when I experienced it in 1993? I thought I’d ask someone going through the experience for the first time now to get her take on it.  So I contacted author Cora Maxine, who is writing paranormal fiction seated in urban fantasy. Here’s what she had to say about her new debut novel CHOICES, the first book in her Make Me Paranormal series:

Debut Novelist, Cora Maxine CHOICES

A Mental Push?

by

Cora Maxine

In 2006, I began a career as a freelance writer, focusing most of my writing on culinary topics. Anytime I told someone I was a writer, they always asked what type of books I wrote. It was as though people assumed magazine, newspaper, and web articles wrote themselves. I eventually just told people I was a culinary writer and left it at that. Though maybe their questions were what I needed to push me towards fiction…?

I had dabbled in fiction since middle school. I used to write poetry constantly and had started several fiction pieces over the years, but only finished one that I entered into a college contest that didn’t even get an honorable mention so I just left my fiction on the back burner for several years.

A few years ago, I published a couple short stories on Amazon, but in 2013 I got serious about writing and in June 2014 I published my first novel, Choices: Make Me Paranormal Book 1. I had been greatly inspired by urban fantasy and paranormal romance authors and loved how fun the genre was to read. It proved equally as fun to write.

Fast forward several almost a year later and I’m still having fun with fiction. In fact, I’m having a lot of fun giving my book away this weekend! May 1 – May 3, you can get Choices on Amazon for FREE. Chosen: Make Me Paranormal Book 2 will be released this summer so now’s the perfect time to get in on the series.

So Cora got a push to try her hand at fiction. Many authors do. We seem to start broad, writing a variety of types of things, and write our way to what is right for us.

Back when I started seriously writing, I wrote what was most fun. What excited me, aroused the passion to write and the compassion needed to write. (I still do.) Seems Cora had that experience, too.

I guess on this, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Writers are still moths to flame for that which fires the imagination and seems more fun than work, which is a wonderful thing that infuses the work and makes reading entertaining for readers.

Be sure to pick up a free copy of Cora’s CHOICES at Amazon. 

An editor with her own imprint once told me the only thing riskier than publishing a new author was supplying NASA with o-rings. (Referencing the Challenger incident). If we want fresh and original works, we need writers who are enthusiastic about what they’re writing, and for them to not just debut but to continue to write and publish. For that, they need our support.

To Cora, I say, Congratulations! May you write and have fun and feel that first book thrill with every new novel all the rest of the days of your life!

Blessings,

Vicki