Jezelle and the World That Made Her

I’ve been writing for over twenty years. In the last five, I’ve kicked into overdrive and published multiple novels (7). I’ve built a world—layered, mythic, filled with blood, ghosts, and gods. I redirected from pouring myself into my career and remodeling my house to diverting the flow to writing. Day after day. Year after year. I write. I have no children, close friends beyond my wife, or social life. I do not watch TV or movies. I work to pay the bills and write to fill the void. That’s it.

I love writing. I look forward to it every day. It’s not a chore, and I don’t force it (most of the time). It’s the one place I feel wholly alive.

But I must admit, I’m tired, and I grow disenfranchised. It’s not the act of creating worlds. It is the desire for it to be for something. As much as I try to focus on the words, I keep feeling a clawing need for it to mean more than just filling my hard drive with beautiful, unread stories. I need to know I wasn’t just whispering into the dark all these years.

Let me be completely transparent with you. The launches of my last two books were failures in any real metric. My average monthly earnings from book sales is less than $20 (Amazon’s terms limit how much I can say about my sales). That’s about eight books a month- after five years of hustle. I maxed out in 2023. You may be saying to yourself, “That’s about right,” but if not, I could use some help- anything, a review, a kind word, tell a friend, a sale… anything. Help me turn it around.

And yes, I’ve done the work. The ads. The blurbs. The rewrites. The promo sites. The keyword optimization. The blog posts. Social media. Engaged with communities. All the things indie authors are told they must do. And the result? Mostly quiet. There was a trickle of response here and there—an occasional kind word, a lone review that reminded me someone was listening. But still, for the most part, it feels like shouting into a storm that has already passed. I have spent much more than I’ve made on this passion- in blood, sweat, tears, and cash.

So, I ask myself the hard question: Am I just not good enough? If so few are reading, does that mean the majority don’t want to? If none of it works, maybe the world is answering me clearly—and I just don’t want to hear what it has to say.

That’s terrifying to me because the truth is, these books will be my legacy. These words are what I have to leave behind. I will be replaced and forgotten within a few months when I retire from my job—decades of my life making others rich for nothing. I won’t have children to carry my name. Family won’t remember me at dinner tables or gatherings generations from now. I’ve invested everything into this one chance at being remembered.

And right now, it feels like that chance has already passed. I will remain as a few old books in some dark corner of Amazon- book #239 on page 15 of dark epic fantasy- or, more likely, disappear from the algorithm altogether. I already see it happening.

Still, I finished the first draft of another book last night. Jezelle: Theif of Oaks is done at about 90k words. And I can unequivably say that it is the best thing I’ve ever written. For once, I didn’t finish with a behemoth needing months of shaping and editing. I finished with a tight story, as long as it needed to be, with tears in my eyes and fire in my chest. It is a triumph.

But that fire is bittersweet.

Because as proud as I am of what this book became, there’s a stillness around it. I know some of you have read my work, left kind reviews, sent messages, or supported me in small but powerful ways—and I’m deeply grateful. But a part of me also hoped, deep down, that this one would be different after five years. That more would be waiting. That the fire I felt would echo louder beyond the page. But I doubt anyone is lying awake thinking, “Gosh, I can’t wait until Jezelle comes out.” No one is asking for another work from Scott Austin Tirrell. Few are watching. Jezelle will enter the noise with little fanfare and, much like its main character, be a tiny flicker in a vast dark ocean- just like all her brothers and sisters.

And yet—I wrote it anyway. I finished it anyway. That counts for something, even if no one else sees it. Right?

This is the soil from which Jezelle was born. If you’ve read the sample chapter, you already know. She isn’t just a character. She’s a wound—a child abandoned in a world that sees her as disposable. She’s the voice in the corner, the ghost in the street, the hand gripping a stolen knife not because she wants to hurt—but because it’s the only way left to survive.

Jezelle’s story is brutal because the world that inspired her is brutal. She’s the scream that no one hears. She’s a reflection of the world I see when I open my eyes too wide: broken systems, abandoned children, men with power who think they own the powerless—a world where hope is currency and cruelty is culture.

I set out to write something dark. I wrote what I felt. Lately, that feeling has been despair dressed as fiction.

But here’s the other truth: Jezelle keeps fighting. Not for some grand destiny. Not for revenge. But for herself. For the stubborn belief that her life is worth something, even if the world insists otherwise.

And maybe that’s what keeps me writing, too.

So, no, this isn’t a cry for attention. It’s a reckoning. It’s what happens when you invest everything into the fire and are left warming your hands on the smoke.

If you’re a writer, a reader, or someone who has ever looked around and felt like the world has already forgotten you, maybe you’ll understand. Perhaps you’ll see a little of Jezelle in yourself.

Maybe that’s where the real legacy begins—not in the noise, not in the numbers, but in the small, unspoken moments when a reader finds a page and whispers, “This is me.” Or maybe, “This is who I want to be.”

And even if only one fan is given a bit of hope—even if it is just me—maybe that’s enough.

Cheers!