#indieauthorMAYketers Day 1

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Well, that's me. I'm Sara, I live in Texas, and I write about murder. I dabble in both historical and contemporary, and right now I'm focusing on a mystery series set in alternate history Japan. The first book will be released in September 2020!

I'm a plotter, complete with outlines, scene cards, and an ever-present copy of Save the Cat on my desk. I overwrite like nobody's business, so it's a good thing I love editing!

I've been writing stories since I could hold a pencil, and its always been my dream to be an author. I studied English in college, with a minor in creative writing. I was a teacher for most of my professional working life, in public schools before moving to Japan to teach at a conversation school for three years. In Japan, I met my husband, and we moved back to the US after we got married.

I'm now a stay-at-home mom to a 6-year-old who keeps me busy with homeschooling and not-writing. Fortunately, she's coming to an age where she understands that my work is important to me, and she's learning to respect my writing hours.

Welcome to the website. I’ll be trying to spend a little more time here as the release of my first book draws nearer. Keep an eye out for updates!

Preptober Day 6: Biggest Distractions

Family, all the time. The best kind of distraction to have!

I have a husband and a homeschooled 5-year old daughter (who will be six in November! I did not plan to have a NaNoWriMo baby, but she came three weeks early to make sure she didn’t miss it!), and being a stay-at-home mom takes up a lot of my time. I wouldn’t change this for anything; I love that I am able to stay home and homeschool my daughter, and I know how lucky I am to be able to do it.

But there are some days I don’t get any writing work done because I’m busy with housekeeping or teaching my daughter. I have to keep an eye on that kind of thing, that I’m not going multiple days without writing or otherwise working on a book. If I take a couple of days off from writing, it’s harder for me to get back into the flow. My schedule is a bit all over the place - each day is different from the one before! - which is why I use an hourly planner to know where my time is going each day. Some days, we’re constantly on the go, other days we’re at home taking care of housework. I plan my writing around the times I know I’m going to be busy with other things. It’s all about balance. Sometimes I look forward to a break from writing to spend time with the ones I love! Family time is important too!

Preptober Day 3: Genre

Over the years, I’ve written in a lot of different genres. I even wrote fanfiction for a while, including for one (unsuccessful) NaNoWriMo. For a long time, fantasy was my preference, inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and In the Land of Unicorns. Then, in high school, I started watching Law & Order and In the Heat of the Night, and I was bitten by the mystery bug. I wrote fantasy for a while after that, but then, for NaNoWriMo 2009, I plotted a steampunky murder mystery set in late-Meiji era Japan. It wasn’t my first NaNo win, but it was my most successful (56000 words written!), and I’ve been enamored with mystery ever since. I have plans for historical mysteries (starting with the steampunk, which has become less steampunky over time) and contemporary mysteries in the future.

Preptober Day 1: All About You


Preptober is upon us! It is time to prepare for the marathon of writing: National Novel Writing Month! Next month, so many writers around the world will be attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days!

This is my favorite time of year. I love NaNoWriMo season. It’s been a part of my life for a very long time, and it has become a yearly tradition that I just can’t do without. I look forward to October every year, when I begin to plan out the story I’ll be working on in November.

My local ML (municipal liaison, the one tasked with wrangling the Wrimos of their given region) shared an Instagram challenge from author Rachel Bateman, who created it for her local region. I decided to take on the challenge too. I’ve been posting responses to the prompts on my Instagram, but I thought it might be nice to do it here too, since I’ve been neglecting this site since I went on vacation at the beginning of October.

Day #1 is All About You.

This will be my 17th NaNoWriMo. My first time was in 2003, when I was in college and one of my friends heard about it from one of our teachers and convinced a bunch of us to do it. I wrote 17,000 words, but it was the most I’d ever written on a story, and I was hooked. It's been a fall tradition ever since. I have written in a variety of genres, and I’ve even been a rebel a couple of times, but now I stick to mysteries, historical and contemporary. I also always start a new project, because I’ve found I’m more successful that way. This year, I'll be working on book 4 in an alternate history mystery series set in Japan in 1908.

When I’m not distracted by NaNoWriMo, I'm a stay-at-home mom who balances writing with homeschooling. I live in Texas, but my heart is in Japan, where I lived for three years and met and married my husband. We would love to live there again someday. I have one living daughter and one daughter who was born sleeping. I am going to self-publish my first book next summer, which is both exciting and terrifying and what this website is all about. Life is rarely dull, and I'm always curious what tomorrow will bring.