You know that feeling when you discover an old box in the back of a drawer or closet? Maybe it’s covered in dust, worn by time, or has been there so long you can’t remember putting it there in the first place. Fiction writing is sometimes like that.
Being an editor is fun. As an editor, I see into other authors’ worlds, get a glimpse into their minds, and enjoy stories before they are ever published. I get to help shape them and bring an author’s dream to life. It’s hard work, but it’s fun work.
But once I start in on my work? Everything I know seems to go out the window. I find myself looking for things like how to start the first chapter or questioning whether I know what I’m doing. I can edit all day and I can write all day, but the imposter syndrome is always lurking right under the surface.
See? We editors suffer from it, too. There’s a paralyzing fear that sometimes comes from handing our work to an editor. Especially when you feel like the best bit of writing in your 20,000-word novella amounts to: Wut r werds?
I’ve lost a great deal of my writing over the years. Thieving relatives, computer crashes, corrupted files, external drives mysteriously vanishing during moves… It’s enough to break a girl’s heart. A lot of work I had ended up reduced to nothing more than a few scribbled lines of ideas. Now I’m paranoid about backing up in multiple ways, but that wasn’t always possible.
On top of that? A years-long ride through Hades where the whirlwind of craziness refused to let me or anyone in my family down for a moment to breathe. During that time, I pulled most of what I had left and already published offline. Imposter syndrome, fear, and deep depression meant I all but gave up ever writing again. I couldn’t see a way out or a way forward with dreams.
Things are better and so let me introduce an oldie but goodie: Vanish!
I found this little gem still sitting in my drafts on Amazon KDP. Covers hidden in a folder on my Google Drive. Snippets of notes in Dropbox that worked on the newest edition of Scrivener I received for Christmas. And people who read the original years ago piping up and asking if it would ever appear again. They still remembered it! Still could tell me scenes that stuck with them!
Oh, how my little writer’s heart skipped a beat!
And the story itself went: knock knock. “I’m home!”
So Vanish is being revamped, edited, and all polished up. I doubt I’ll change the title. I loved this book when I first started writing it and I love it still, although I feel like my writing was awful. Now that I’m out of the shadows and willing to work on it, I think it has a great deal of potential. People liked it years ago, and I think the thing stinks. Some elbow grease and shining up a bit should straighten all that out and give me something I can live with, if not be proud of.
Back then, the advice was a short series of books creating a novella or novel length when all put together, creating a series. I may stick to this format. I don’t like how short each part is, but that can be fixed. I haven’t decided whether to do it in parts or one book, but at least it lives again!
So what is Vanish?
Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt like someone was looking back? Perhaps it seemed like your reflection moved, out of the corner of your eye, when you didn’t. Or someone was behind you when you knew you were alone. Did you leave that cup on the table, even though you were sure it was in the cabinet? Was it you that left the bedroom door open, the drawer open, the TV on? Of course it was.
Right?
Only you’re wrong. So very wrong. You’re right about the guy at work who seems… off. You’re right about your partner’s change in behavior. You’re right that you heard a knock from the mirror. And you’re right to look twice at the shadow in the corner.
You’re crazy… until you’re proven right.
This is Vanish.
Don’t look behind you. Don’t let them know you see.
