Never make a goal you can’t see yourself achieving.
Back in October 2022, I set a goal to write a paranormal thriller with a witch heroine. Her sister was brutally murdered. Her intentions pure. Find the killer. Bring them to justice.
That November, during NaNoWriMo, I wrote half of the manuscript. I had intended to write the full first draft, but couldn’t seem to get enough words out. The end goal for NaNo is to write a fifty-thousand-word manuscript. I was nickel and diming. A thousand here. A thousand there. I just couldn’t get into the full swing of it. Or so I thought.
Then December hit. If you’ve been reading my blogs then you know I lost two family members back-to-back. So, no writing.
January came and went with barely any writing.
February was the same.
In March, I think I wrote two or three chapters.
I pushed the deadline by a month on Kindle. I was furious with myself. How had I not completed this simple book?
I spoke with my therapist about the situation. We broke down my need to write. What was it that drove me to do it? What did I get out of it? What was this story trying to teach me?
Turns out the thing that drove me to write was the same thing Onyx was trying to teach me. I write for the sack of simply telling a story. It didn’t matter how long it was, or detailed, or even how much it sold. I need the joy of telling a good yarn.
That was when Alex, my therapist (she’s awesome btw), said, “What if this (meaning Onyx) wasn’t a first book? What if it were a prequel novella?”
Eureka! The lightbulb turned on in my mind. She had flipped a switch and Raven’s story became clearer to me. The Raven Sinclair novels don’t start with Onyx. Onyx was backstory, a good one at that, and that was why it needed to be shared as a novella. It was all setup for the bigger story.
I promise not to go into spoilers, but there is a whole world I’m going to enjoy sharing with you all and it centers around Raven Sinclair.
Who is she?
Raven Sinclair is a bisexual witch who loves to solve mysteries. She gets a unique sense of joy out of figuring out who the bad guy is and stopping them in their tracks. She doesn’t use a gun. She uses magic. Her father was a small-town cop. Her mother ran a pagan shop. Her sister, Onyx, was a waitress in a brewery. The woman she loves, Grace Trudeau, is a pink-haired Jew from New York who loves to love.
Long story short (too late) I made my goal. Now, you can read Onyx starting Tuesday, April 18th. The novella will be available to purchase as an eBook for ninety-nine cents, or through Kindle Unlimited, and as a paperback for $5.99 in several countries. Check your local Amazon page for it.