GUEST BLOGGER: Juli D. Revezzo

Writing Through the Storm

Hey, I’m Juli and I’m a writer. Yes, I know everyone is these days right? It’s fun, exciting, they say. Hey, maybe you can even get lucky and make some money.

(Okay, okay, now that we’ve all stopped laughing, ask yourself this: What drives you to it? To create, to put yourself out there, to try again and again?

That, I think, is the question we all have to ask ourselves once we move these tales out of our computers. What drives us to give them to critique partners, to let them tear open our veins, for better or worse?

For me, it was not an easy road. Every writer has stories of rejection, of wrong turns. In my case, I think it was Fate slapping me in the nose that led me to finally listen to the gurus that urged, “Come on; you should just try this once.”

And Fate’s a real bitch, sometimes. What can you do when life smacks you in the nose? I got smacked pretty hard the last few years, but I didn’t sit down and feel sorry for myself.

No. I wrote.

And wrote.

And wrote some more. I fouled up a couple times, and a couple manuscripts; but then I sat down, and thought real hard. Was I squeezing myself into a box I just wasn’t going to fit in?

If I continued on the path I’d been following for half my life (yes, half my life), and tried and tried and tried really hard, what were the odds that I’d ever get further than I had in all those years of trying? Was I becoming better at querying? Or worse at writing?

Yes, believe it or not, I’m coming to realize practice doesn’t always make perfect, if you are practicing the wrong things. And practicing in a storm of upheaval—which Patty can attest to—doesn’t always yield results.

But hey. It’s a learning process, right?

The end result added to what I’ve done today. It compelled me to take a real look at Legacy publishing and I realized, maybe its brass ring wasn’t so shiny after all. The stigmas have been swept aside and maybe not everyone needs to take the same path to enlighten--erm, I mean publication. The realization, or the sting of the smacks whatever you want to call it, the storms I weathered went into the storms of my first book, The Artist’s Inheritance—and helped me to deepen and publish it, for better or worse.

So, the question all comes down to this: What can you trust more in the storm? The rusty brass ring? Or the sails of your own making?

I know what I think. So, if you’re thinking of what to do with those sails of trying, and trying again. Then do. Get out there, and hoist those sails. We’ll see what’s over the horizon.

Want to learn more about my book The Artist’s Inheritance? Okay.

Synopsis:

Settling into their new home in Gulf Breeze, Florida, Caitlin finds strange changes coming over her husband Trevor. He seems obsessed with a beautiful chair he’s carving.

When the nightmares deepen and ghosts begin lurking—she knows something’s not right, and not just her newfound precognitive abilities. It’s the damned chair, she’s sure. Could it be just what it seems: a mundane piece of furniture? If so, why is it attracting dark forces—the forces she suspects drove Trevor’s siblings to insanity and suicide?

Before the same happens to Trevor, Caitlin must convince him to sell his art. But armed with only a handful of allies, and little experience of the supernatural, she must proceed with caution against the hellish forces besieging her family. If she succeeds, she will break the ancestral curse. If she fails, she may lose forever the one thing she cares about most: her beloved Trevor.

It’s available at Amazon for Kindle

http://tinyurl.com/d2bb5la

and coming soon in paperback.

Thanks, Patty, for inviting me here!