DON’T FEAR THE FEAT- EMBRACE IT by Lisa Renee Jones

Written by My Books-My World

http://www.writerspace.com/2013/dont-fear-the-fear-embrace-it/

Don’t Fear the Fear – Embrace it.
Posted on June 25, 2015 by Lisa Renee Jonesimage
by Lisa Renee Jones

Forsaken- Hi every­one and thank you so much to Writ­er­space for hav­ing me on their blog today! As I get ready to release the third book in my Secret Life of Amy Bensen series, For­saken, it has me revis­it­ing how this series began. I remem­ber very clearly, that I was hes­i­tant about this series. My read­ers adored Sara in my Inside Out series (now in devel­op­ment for TV), and Amy (the lead in The Secret Life of Amy Bensen), was her antithe­sis. Don’t get me wrong, every time I pub­lish a book the fear sinks into my gut. I’ve learned that the fear is a good thing though. Now, I fear the day that sink­ing feel­ing goes away, because that will be the day I’m not push­ing myself to be the very best author I can be.

Back to Amy though – when I first released Escap­ing Real­ity (book 1), it was self-published and very dif­fer­ent from all of my other cur­rent works. Sure, it still has your res­i­dent alpha male that I love to write. Which in this case, came decked out in a suit, goa­tee, tat­too, and goes by the name Liam Stone, but, Amy was worlds away from my other hero­ines. She was younger, more naïve, yet I tried, and hope­fully suc­ceeded, to build in this innate strength to her char­ac­ter. I truly pushed myself out of my com­fort zone with these char­ac­ters, and I even ended up tak­ing the series to an all-out dif­fer­ent place than I orig­i­nally intended. All of which, you’ll see in the con­clud­ing vol­umes, For­saken (8/18) and Unbro­ken (9/7).

Escaping RealityThank­fully, I have the best read­ers in the world. Much as I embraced a new chal­lenge in writ­ing this series, they all embraced it as well, and I received so many heart­felt notes about their love for the first two books in the series. So, time passed and I ended up sell­ing the series to Gallery Books, which accounted for a long spell between the release of the first two and last two books. Given the time lapse the fear has returned ten-fold. It’s a whole new set of fears this time though. Will the read­ers of the series have moved on? Do they know two more books are com­ing? It’s such a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket right now, how do I reach my read­ers? And the list goes on and on. You know what though? With the fear comes a thrill. A thrill that is quite inde­scrib­able, and one that can thrive off of one reader’s kind words about one of my books. I would not be able to do what I do with­out all of my read­ers. So as much as I drive my hus­band nutty with my What Ifs around release day, he’s learned to deal with it because it’s part of my process.

Infinite PossibilitiesTo every author out there, the fear is nat­ural and should not be a deter­rent. To every reader who’s picked up one of my books, thank you. Fear, of all mag­ni­tudes, is some­thing we all deal with. It’s how you react and take con­trol in the midst of it that really counts. I get ques­tions all the time about how to write a book and the process of it. My first piece of advice is always: just write. Cliché as it sounds, if you over­think it, that’s when the fear can take over. Trust me, the first books that I wrote are locked away and will never see the light of day, or an edit­ing pen. Writ­ing is a per­sonal process, in most cases. The author is the only one in tune with the char­ac­ters. You’re the sole con­duit to the world you’ve cre­ated. So, you have all the control.

I hope you’ll check out my Secret Life of Amy Bensen series. Books 1 and 2 are already avail­able (Escap­ing Real­ity and Infi­nite Pos­si­bil­i­ties), and books 3 and 4 (For­saken and Unbro­ken) will be com­ing out later this year!

Bio:Lisa Renee Jones
New York Times and USA Today Best­selling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT SERIES, and is now in devel­op­ment by Suzanne Todd (Alice in Won­der­land, Austin Pow­ers, Must Love Dogs) for cable TV. In addi­tion, her Tall, Dark and Deadly series and The Secret Life of Amy Bensen series, both spent sev­eral months on a com­bi­na­tion of the NY Times and USA Today lists. Since begin­ning her pub­lish­ing career in 2007, Lisa has pub­lished more than 40 books trans­lated around the world. Book­list says that Jones sus­pense truly siz­zles with an energy sim­i­lar to FBI tales with a para­nor­mal twist by Julie Gar­wood or Suzanne Brock­mann. Prior to pub­lish­ing, Lisa owned multi-state staffing agency that was rec­og­nized many times by The Austin Busi­ness Jour­nal and also praised by Dal­las Women Mag­a­zine. In 1998 LRJ was listed as the #7 grow­ing women owned busi­ness in Entre­pre­neur Mag­a­zine. Lisa loves to hear from her read­ers. You can reach her at http://www.lisareneejones.com and she is active on twit­ter and face­book daily.