I'm writing again after a long bad time away from it. I started sending my stuff to publishers when I was in my teens, back before e-pubbing, when you really did just ship a manuscript off in an envelope and wait months for a rejection so you could send it somewhere else. Between that and my fondness for control, I decided to self-publish. Last year I self-published three novels--a historical gothic romance I wrote in grad school, and the first two volumes of a young-adult paranormal romance series--and I'm close to releasing a new one. I find it incredibly frustrating to have to work around my full-time job*, because there's so much to do when you self-publish. Marketing and promo alone could easily take up all my time, since it's so difficult to get discovered these days (especially in YA). So far my gothic is performing best, but it's also been out a lot longer--almost a year now. With that in mind I've decided that my next book will be another historical gothic, but I'm nervous because it's been years since I was steeped in the Victorian-lit atmosphere.
*My day job is editor at a book-publishing house, which has given me a healthy fear/contempt for most traditional publishing houses. I've done a fair amount of unacknowledged ghostwriting there and have shepherded a lot of crappy non-writers' books into publication, which hasn't increased my respect for trad publishing, lol.
