Somewhere between 2014 and 2016, I exclusively wrote supernatural thrillers.
It’s a genre I loved and still do (I mean, who doesn’t love a ghost story?), but I quickly came up against a brick wall.
After spending several months writing The Curse of Abbey Ruins duology, I moved on to a new project and wrote Book #1 of what would have become a long-running ghost detective-type series. I had the main character down pat, a dog (always a win), a charming mentor, and the embers of a love interest.
Everything looked up… until it didn’t.
I began brainstorming the sequels, and there, I discovered a pretty big problem.
All of my ideas ran on the same two things:
+ A disgruntled (or sometimes downright evil) spirit 👻
+ A haunted house/location 🏠
The problem is, these tropes are the bedrock of this genre. Failure to provide them and I risked spending months and years on a storyline that nobody wanted, which would have crushed my spirit in ways not even my recent bout with FrankenFlu did.
So, I had two choices:
Either put aside my feelings and write the series in accordance with the tropes, or stop at Book #1, cut my losses, and leave the genre.
You might be able to guess by the lack of supernatural thrillers in my Storefront that I chose the latter, which — admittedly — left something of a small mark on my heart given that it was one of my best writings in the genre.
(For any curious Legionnaires wondering, yes, I do plan on releasing the book one day as the story itself is self-contained and doesn’t contain any nasty cliffhangers.)
Anyway, if me abandoning one book horrifies you, then you’re going to want to sleep with a light on tonight when I tell you I’ve also got an unpublished post-apocalyptic novel (Outbreak) collecting e-dust and a zombie short story series (Lights Out) that also hasn’t seen the “light of day”.
So yeah, there are a few skeletons languishing on my hard drive.
Ask any author who’s been in the space for longer than a weekend, and they will likely show you their body count.
Such is the curse of being a creative, I guess.
Too many ideas and not always enough passion to continue the series.
All things said, I’m quite happy in epic fantasy where I get to spin tales about divided regions, warring kingdoms, and a grand enemy stirring in the basins of a cursed land.
Oh, wait… did I just… accidentally describe The Divided Region?
I think I did.
Whoops. 😅
While I’m at it, I might as well do the honourable thing and at least point you to where you can grab the Starter Bundle:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/divided-region-starter-bundle
DJJW