What are you excited about?
I’m super excited about the upcoming release of my short story Unconditionally, of course!
And I need to make a decision. I’ve not told anyone back in Sweden (except for my daughter and her boyfriend) that I’ll be a published author soon, I haven’t even told them that I write. I’ve wanted to keep it a secret, probably because I doubted my ability, but also because I wanted something that was just mine for a while.
But now that I’m actually going to be published (which must mean I don’t suck, right? 🙂 ) I’m thinking about telling them. It feels like it’s too big to keep to myself, and when people ask how I spend my days I can’t tell them. They think I’m a first class slacker, that spend my days by the pool, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
And also: there’s…you know…two boys having S-E-X in my story. Do I really want my mom to read about that? (The risk isn’t very big because she’s not great at English. But she would probably try to read it at least…and then what? 🙂 )
I don’t know, what do you think?
Nell Iris 
I told my parents early one because I was happy and I always been writing. I even told my mother-in-law and she was super supportive… the thing that worried me was when my father-in-law said he was reading my yakuza story! He’s a psychologist and my thought was like ‘oh now he’s going to read into everything that I wrote. The massive slaughter the head in the freezer’ but he ended up being really supportive too.
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That’s great, I’m happy for you. And I can totally see how you’d worry about your FIL’s reaction 😀
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I’m in a similar situation. I want to be able to talk about it. I want to be able to share when a reviewer says nice things about my story, or bitch when one doesn’t even bother to get their names right. I want to be able to hold the books in my hands and say “I wrote these” to somebody other than my cats. My husband was the only person in my real life who knew, and he’s gone now. I’m pretty sure my very liberal kids would probably be supportive, I just need to get up the nerve. My trouble is I’ve always had low self-esteem, and I don’t want people I care about to read them and think they’re not good, and in my mind that’s the only possible outcome.
Basically, I’ve got no advice. I’m not in a position to offer any.
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Then I have an advantage: I have my husband, my daughter and her boyfriend to talk to and they’re my biggest supporters. The thing is: my husband told me flat out that he wouldn’t read my books because romance movies/TV/books isn’t his thing, so he said that he wouldn’t understand, but that he’s super proud and will always support me. And he does. He listens to me talk about my writing, he says yes when I need to try something on him (is it possible to sit like this and reach there and do this?), I even tell him about you and Amy 🙂
So maybe your kids won’t like your books, maybe romance isn’t their thing, but I’m willing to bet that they’d be very proud of you and what you’ve accomplished. And they would probably love to listen to you talk about it because when we love someone we want to share what’s important to them, right? And if not your kids, maybe you have a trusted friend you could talk to?
My friends are liberal and wouldn’t have a problem with the gay thing…some of them might be in the “Romance isn’t real books”-camp though, that’s what makes me hesitate. My dad wouldn’t be interested in reading it, my mom would want to support me and she likes to read romance (MF of course) and I know she even reads sexy romances. But it’s feels different when it’s her daughter that’s written it I think 🙂
Maybe I sound like a hypocrite now, telling you to tell your kids while I’m still on the fence about the friends in Sweden. But I think everyone needs someone to confide in, and I already have the best ones, the other’s aren’t really necessary. But it would be nice 🙂
And until you decide what to do, you are more than welcome to bitch to me! ❤
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😀
“some of them might be in the “Romance isn’t real books”-camp though, that’s what makes me hesitate.”
I think that line is a big part of my hesitancy as well.
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Grrrr, it sucks so bad that we even think like that. And it drives me crazy that so many people out there have that opinion. Book discrimination…it’s not okay!!
We’re awesome people, we wrote actual books! That’s a freaking hard thing to do. We shouldn’t have to be afraid to be judged for such an arbitrary, stupid thing!
Now I’m irritated!! (Can you tell? 😀 )
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LOL. I know! It’s unbelievably hard. SO much time and effort goes into it. And it makes me feel like such an unassertive weakling to care so much about being judged.
If I ever decide to attend a convention it’ll force my hand, since it’s bound to affect a weekday, and I babysit for one of my daughters. So questions would be asked, alternate plans would have to be made, etc.
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