Tag: personal history writing

The Long Story: Part 4

Reassembling

Because so much of my identity has shifted over the past few years, I need and want a fresh start with my writing career. I’m willing to lose a boatload of reviews and ranking to achieve this, because I feel confident that dismantling and reassembling my author platform will be truer to who I am and what I write in the long run.

Part of the fresh start I’m making is changing my author name and opening a small publishing company. The publishing company will not only serve as a platform for republishing my books, but I will also take on one writer at a time to help them develop their writing in a mentor-based publishing process (more on that later).

There are tax-based reasons for republishing my books under my new company (DelSheree Press LLC), but more than anything it’s about treating my writing as a professional career and consolidating everything I do with books, writing, coaching, teaching, etc. into one space where I can represent myself and authors I work with in a professional manner.

My plan for my own books is to go back through all 34 of them, series by series to reevaluate the stories and characters for structure and craft issues, ideas and values that don’t sit right with me, relationships that need revisions, and cover art that needs updated.

Here’s a look at what I have planned (in order) and issues I know I need to work on:

  • Date Shark – relationships, representation of sex, possibly cover updates
  • Eliza Carlisle – relationships, depth of mystery, revise/expand novella, cover updates
  • What Had to Be Done – relationships
  • Torino Dreams – relationships, clarify setting
  • Memory’s Edge – relationships, clarify setting, possibly update covers
  • Handbook – relationships, humor, new covers
  • Aerling – clarify setting, fix plot issues, intentional revision of relationships, new covers
  • Some One Wicked – relationships, psychology of characters, series title change, address drop-off in readers between books 1 & 2 (?), new covers
  • Destroyer – review plot for continuity, relationships, new covers
  • Escaping Fate – relationships for sure, review plot for continuity after planning out remainder of series ideas/world concept, new covers
  • Ghost Host – rename individual books, plot continuity, relationships, realism of connection to FBI, new/revised covers
  • Life & Being – plan out series concept/world and revise as needed, relationships, cover update and series plan
  • Twin Souls – revision of setting/cultural aspects, review plot for continuity, new covers
  • Child of Destruction – build out world and revise, relationships, potentially get rid of love triangle aspect, new cover, actually publish this one and decide whether to write book 2 or wrap in one standalone book

Ideally, I would like to have this done by the end of 2026, but I know that is probably unrealistic. It will depend on how much rewriting I end up needing to do on individual books. Then there’s time to actually do all of that and funds to pay for various services I’ll need along the way.

Most likely, it will take me two years to get through all of these. Even though I look at writing much more seriously than I used to, I have many other aspects of life that also need my attention. My two children are now in college, but I have learned that adult children still need you just as much as they did when they were little. I also have three wonderful and busy step children and I try my best to be there to support them in their interests and activities as much as possible. I’m married to a wonderful man who has his own goals and interests that I want to support those however I can as well.

I teach also high school full time, host a weekly radio show called Write On Four Corners (which I love but takes quite a bit of time), coordinate a monthly lecture series called Write to Publish, and will be adding the new adventure of opening DelSheree Press in 2026. Time is at a premium for me right now, and my goal is to use it wisely to balance time with family, work, and, my writing/publishing pursuits. This has never been an easy thing for me, but I’m getting better at it the more I make balance a priority.

I am working on several fiction projects right now, but the first book I plan to publish in 2026 is a nonfiction book based on a workshop I have taught several times. I don’t have enough time to teach extra class right now, but I want to continue to help authors. This book will help me do that. The working (maybe final?) title is “Start Here: An Introduction to Indie Publishing.”

After this post, I’ll return to posting monthly-ish or when I have something interesting to share.

I’ll share more in the future about my current fiction projects, which started as one book and has split into two. That’s also a long story of reassembling a deconstructed idea.

What have you had to reassemble in your own life?

The Long Story: Part 3

Relationship Breakdown

As I mentioned in my last post, the religion I was raised in and the marriage I spent 19 years in drastically shaped my view of relationships and what they should and shouldn’t look like, as well as what should and shouldn’t be tolerated while in one. That influenced my writing by coloring how I portrayed relationships, both good and bad.

Things I thought were positive aspects, I have realized since, came off as demanding or manipulative. Certain interactions that I portrayed as negative, such as challenging a partner when views differed or standing up to someone and holding their ground, are perfectly normal parts of navigating a partnership.

While my current husband and I were dating, he read several of my books and we had multiple enlightening conversations about the relationships I wrote for my characters. It had already been several years since I’d really done any writing at that point, which I think helped me look at things more objectively. My books felt like part of my past—a part I didn’t quite know how to revive into the life I was rebuilding.

Before my divorce, my mental health had been deteriorating and I was not in a good place the last few years of my marriage. In addition to years of unhappiness and stress, several major negative experiences had shaken me profoundly. I knew I needed to make a change, but I didn’t know how and I wasn’t strong enough at that point to even see a path forward.

It took a lot for me to seek help and I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment over needing therapy. I’d always been a doer, a fixer, and get-things-done-and-dealt-with kind of person. Having to go to my doctor and then a therapist and admit that I wanted to disappear and was having suicidal ideations just about broke me.

But it also saved me.

Therapy taught me a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life for me and my kids. Seeing the negative effects my kids were experiencing was what finally pushed me to get help. I needed to gain strength to be there for them and help them heal. I learned about healthy boundaries, that it was okay to have big feelings, that there were ways to manage those big emotions when they threatened to overwhelm, and about mechanisms to cope with stress in healthier ways.

While I was learning how to manage my emotions and stress better, I slowly began to realize that the relationship I was in was not okay and was never going to change. Leaving the church had opened up the possibility that I didn’t have to stay in a bad situation forever, but developing inner strength to stand up for what I was learning was right in a relationship was what freed me to finally end things.

Because I had spent my childhood watching an unhealthy relationship between my parents, then spent five years in the middle of their never-ending divorce proceeding, and had followed their example into a similar relationship, I had no idea what a solid, respectful, healthy relationship looked like when I was writing romances.

In some ways, that probably helped me created flawed characters, but they were flawed in ways I couldn’t see at the time. Looking back at some of those stories, the endings or how characters arrived at their endings aren’t always what I would write now. Flawed characters are important, and I will keep writing them, but that works so much better when it’s intentional and not born from misguided ideas about what relationships should be.

As I go back through my old books, I will make changes where needed to be more intentional in how I craft flawed characters and how they learn and grow in order to achieve the ending they want. Having been through that process myself gives me a lot of starting points for new stories as well, and being in a wonderfully supportive and healthy relationship now guides me in helping characters find that as well (because I love a good HEA).

There will always be those who dislike romance, either because it is often too formulaic or seems trivial, but relationships (romantic or not) are a key part of being human. They can be what sustains you or what tears you down. We learn important lessons from who we put our trust in to safeguard our hearts and dreams for the future. Some of those lessons are brutal. Others teach us who we want to be and how we want to live our lives.

What relationship has had the biggest impact on you?