My rebellious streak...

I have a little bit of a rebellious streak. Not against God or authority or anything important. Mostly against social trends. Like when I was in high school, whatever was popular, I would do the opposite. Don't think that this is going to be a confession of epic proportions of all the shenanigans I pulled in my youth. Far from it. In fact, my rebelliousness tends to be the opposite. I go against the popular grain.

This is great if you go to a crazy high school that had one of the highest drug and weapon confiscation rates in the state. It is not, however, great for writing.

Because, you see, the same repulsion I have toward the trendy clothes, the trendy cups, the trendy water (in middle school everyone drank Evian,) etc. etc. carries through. I CANNOT write what everyone else is writing. It's in my nature. Authors are writing hockey romance because it's trending. I shrug my shoulders. Vampires in the early 2010s. Meh. 

And that's a good thing. Those trend-chasers make a lot of money. I see them. They are good at what they do. I don't knock how they run their author business. Quite frankly I'm jealous of how they can spot and follow a trend so quickly. It's just not something that's in my personality. I wish it were.

I like to follow my own path. So if it's billionaire books, I'm going to put my own twist to it. If it's vampires, I have my own set of rules. It's a great asset to have as a writer, to be able to do your own thing. Most other greats did their own thing, but that means that success is much longer in coming. People want to see authors make a ton of cash. They want to believe in the dream that you can create something and your audience will come running. That only happens to trend-chasers. When you're like me, when you blaze your own path, your audience is curated, developed, nurtured one reader at a time. I form connections. I want your brand loyalty and friendship not so much your money. Money is a byproduct of creating something that will wow you. If I haven't done that, then I haven't done my job well enough.

What kind of reader are you? Do you read what's trending or do you read with a rebellious streak, too? If you are, then we need to be friends.