I remember dreaming of the day I’d have my ‘author photo’ taken.
It was going to be for my fantasy series…because those had been the first books I’d ever finished. I could easily visualize the photo it would be, how I would dress, how I would look into the camera with all the wisdom of my story and its tragic, flawed characters. And the readers, with all their knowledge by the end of the books, after our long journey together, would just know what I was trying to say to them.
Things don’t always happen the way you imagine them to. Instead, I’ve taken a photo for A Song Beyond Walls – a debut book I never thought I’d come out with. And then now this photo for A Drink for the Bride in the Forbidden Delights anthology. I’ve sometimes found it hard to feel proud of these photos, of these achievements, when they weren’t ‘part of the plan’. A stupid thought, I know. There is no ‘plan’. And regardless of the timeline of them, these little ‘author photos’ are achievements.
After all, I am still looking into the camera with all the wisdom of my story and its tragic, flawed characters. But with ALL of my characters, and ALL of my stories, even the ones that have yet to be read…or written. I suppose that’s the moral of this. No single book makes an author an ‘author’. It is even the ideas that fill our minds which give us our title. This photo is for A Drink for the Bride, yes, but it’s also for every story that has ever been, or will be, in my heart.
Thank you for being here, for walking alongside me on this journey of unknowns.