10 Years Younger: The Writer I Used to Be

The writer I used to be followed trends. She wrote based on the standard, sacrificing authenticity and, sometimes, diversity. Toronto Music Garden (2017) Photo Credit: Kelis Moriah-Campbell A writer friend once asked why I didn’t set my books in my city, Toronto. It was a good question to which I didn’t really have a good answer. Looking back, I think it may have had something to do with putting out what you take in.  For the most part, all of the books I read, from the time I could read to the time I started to write my own stories, were based in the United States. With the exception of Canadian content focused reading lists in high school and university.  When it came to the stories I loved—romance, fantasy, mystery, contemporary—worlds were consistently built in one country. And once I started writing, it didn’t matter what the genre was. Without realizing it, I had bought into the idea that beautiful stories could only happen there.  I’ve come to realize the reason fo...

I published my last novel 10 years ago. I hadn't realized so much time had passed until the other day. I'm currently on vacation until September and had an urge to look at some of my old writing after making a decision to get back into it.  I managed to remember my Goodreads and Amazon KDP logins and have spent the past few days reminiscing on the writer I used to be. These days, all I write are emails and draft legal documents. 😕 I stopped writing in 2014 after I decided to go back to school. But between 2011 and 2014, I wrote several novels under different pen names--the unfinished Witchbound Series being my favourite. 💕 For me, Witchbound was something I felt the YA Paranormal fiction market needed. I'm seriously out of touch with what's out there now, but when I created the series, there were very few YA Paranormal fiction novels with diverse main characters. And finding an agent willing to back one was very difficult. I had several requests for my manuscript, but...