Anya Bast

This is cross-posted from the Bradford Bunch blog. I meant to post this yesterday but life kicked my butt instead.

It’s now ONE week until the release of Witch Fury and I am still amazingly calm about the whole thing. It’s a much nicer change from the anxiety-fests of my earlier mass market releases. I’m actually enjoying this one and that’s a good thing, right? The best thing, in my book. Don’t get me wrong, writing is my job and it is work. I take time out from doing things I want to do all the time in order to get my word counts in. I sacrifice. I toil. I constantly miss movies at night with my husband to get in quiet time to work on my WIP. Sometimes the words come out hard and I have to yank them. Sometimes they come out easy. But it’s always work.

Work that I love. Work that I want to continue to love. Book release anxiety diminishes the joy I take in my writing, and therefore it’s my job to diminish the anxiety. It’s a virus infecting my contentment, but I think I finally found the cure. Whew. It took a couple years.

But as I sit here at my laptop on Monday night, my husband and child asleep in bed and my cats lounging around me, I’m very content with my job. I’m so blessed that I’ve been able to take something I love to do and turn it into a career. I wish everyone could do that.

Right now I’m getting ready to turn my attention to JEWELED, an historical fantasy menage a trois romance that will release from Berkley Heat. This is a very, very hot book. It’s also extremely emotional, probably one of the most emotional stories I’ve written. My voice does come in a range of flavors. I’m very comfortable (probably the most comfortable) writing action-packed paranormal romance that tickles the line of urban fantasy. But I like to branch off into other subgenres once in a while too. I like to challenge myself in my writing and tackle plots that are a little bit out of my normal comfort zone. JEWELED is one example of that.

I DO love my job. 🙂 And I’m happy to be able to say that with an honest and open heart a week before a mass market release…right before the craziness starts (good craziness, but craziness nonetheless).

I do hope you all love Witch Fury as much I loved writing it. I wrote a free short story that further ties up the tale of one of secondary characters, btw. I’ll try to have it up on my site the week of the release, though I wouldn’t recommend reading it before you finish the series.

Have a fantastic day, all! I’m having my hair done and will spend the rest of the day working. Luckily, working on something I love. I wish that same thing for all of you.