Flashback Fridays #9

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I struggled to find a post to look back on this week. I settled on two that mark the beginning of a transition.

In the late summer of 2020, I was entering the doldrums. After the little spurt of sales for The Island of Stone, the numbers tanked, and my strategy for publishing The Slaying of the Bull didn’t work. I received an early one-star review for the book, and it never recovered. I hit two dead ends and felt pretty disenfranchised. I went back and forth between the two series as I struggled to find an authorial identity. It was not a good time. In August, September, October, November, and December, I made almost no sales. Many of my posts were writing updates, trying to justify changes in my strategy, and venting frustration.

As I’ve discussed before, I initially wanted to be a horror writer. At the time, I was an avid horror movie fan and had a library of almost one thousand horror movies. I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, and his mix of the horrific and the strange appealed to me. But I soon found that the market was saturated, and knowing the genre didn’t necessarily translate into a passion for writing in it. So, I pivoted to historical fiction, and as you will see from the post below, that didn’t go so well either. The historical fiction audience just weren’t my people.

This period did have a bright spot, though. I was beginning to write new material, not just fixing old stuff. I went back and forth between two different book #2s in the series. This was August 2020, and I wouldn’t start writing Dawn of the Lightbearer until February 2021, but the breadcrumbs were there. I was beginning to itch to write something fresh, not just new material continuing old plotlines, but something entirely new. The rest is history.

Cheers!

Unconditional love of history
Time to retool

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Published by scottatirrell

Scott Austin Tirrell writes dark fantasy because apparently the real world doesn't contain enough dead people, ruined faiths, and gods with questionable motives. Most of his stories take place in Lucardia, a world with a long memory and a rather serious problem with its dead. Its people have been taught many comforting things about history, religion, power, and what happens when the reaper’s sickle swings. Unfortunately, much of it is wrong. Scott is less interested in heroes than in complicated people who stumble into mysteries they probably should have left alone—and then have to live with what they find. When he isn’t writing, Scott wanders old cemeteries in search of character names and thinks about fictional people as though they have personally inconvenienced him. He lives near Boston with his wife and maintains a healthy distrust of ravens.

One thought on “Flashback Fridays #9”

  1. Recently read The Slaying of the Bull, and my overall reaction is…. interesting to see where you started and how far you have come as a writer! Also read Island of Stone a while back and it is a better book. Your love of history is put to good use in the Lucardia series–where there is no danger that historical details (I spent so much time researching this! So I really must include it, even if it doesn’t advance the story in any discernable way…) will get in the way of plot and character development…

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