When I left my former career in Federal Acquisition, I carried with me a long history of deadlines, performance metrics, and being on call for everything and everyone. Retirement was supposed to feel like breathing room—but for a while, I still found myself chasing numbers, even as an author.
Until I stopped.
Not because I couldn’t chase sales. But because I finally understood that I didn’t need to.
Rite of Awakening — Southern Gothic with bite, Book One of the Rites of Passage. Available direct from the author →
It took me a little over a year to relax into possibilities and stop feeling guilty if I took a nap or a day off to take care of myself. I’d been living in a pressure cooker for decades, and I could finally take the pressure off and immerse myself in my creative world without interruption and without having to limit my writing time to morning commutes and closed doors at lunchtime.
There’s a big difference between scrapping for an enviable two-hour time block to write a chapter and having a regular six-hour block of time to write like one of the demons in your story.
I know it’s not possible for many authors to adopt this shift, either mentally or financially, but I postponed this possibility for decades while I worked 80-hour weeks for everyone but me and wrote my books in whatever spare time I could find. When you’re successful in one career and your family depends on your income, it’s harder to take big financial risks to pursue your dreams. Sometimes they have to wait, and if they do, then you might as well go balls-to-the-wall after what you want to do rather than stick to the safe path.
Maybe this is just a backlash for all the Manhattan editors who demanded manuscripts for bride-baby-cowboy books, specifically the marriage of convenience or secret baby tropes that were so popular when I first started publishing. I left trad publishing and went indie back in 1998 when that decision was woefully unpopular among my now-indie author friends—insert maniacal laughing over their evolution. I traded trope-demanding editors at the big houses for trope-demanding algorithms, though it took a while for one to replace another, and I did have some golden years before indie publishing and ebooks became popular and people considered themselves pioneers in 2011.
I no longer have to force a book to meet a trope to please an algorithm and, in fact, AI will discover me in ways that pay-to-play advertising does not. I don’t have to write to market or cram my creativity into a genre funnel. I’m not beholden to ad dashboards or preorder targets or email list open rates. That changes everything—in the best way.
Instead, I’ve stepped into what I call the Untroubled Author Strategy. It’s not about apathy. It’s about joyful, intentional disengagement from systems that don’t feed my creative fire. Here’s what that looks like for me now:
My New North Star
“I write what I love. I share it in ways that nourish me. If readers find it, wonderful—but I won’t distort my voice to chase them.”
Author Strategy #1: I’ve Ditched the Sales Funnel. I’m Building a Living Archive.
I’m not running email campaigns or segmenting lists anymore. The Last Page Before Dawn blog at The Spiritual Eclectic is now the home of my thoughts, raw moments, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and story fragments that don’t always make it into the final draft.
This blog—along with the occasional post elsewhere—is my invitation to anyone who wants to linger. No pressure. No launch sequence. Just presence.
My Books Are Now a Byproduct of Process, Not a Product to Push
Every book I publish now is a reflection of the path I’m on. That path may wind through grief, memory, magic, trauma, joy, or transformation. If a story insists on being written, I write it. And when it’s ready, I release it—without urgency or promotion cycles.
These books are artifacts of process, not just content drops.
Content Marketing Is Now Personal Mythmaking
I love content marketing—but not in the email funnel kind of way. I don’t even like to call it marketing. For me, it’s sacred storytelling.
It’s:
– An article that blends childhood obsessions about mythical lost cities with travel to the legendary location
– An essay about my last visit to my mother’s grave and why we can’t go “home” again
– A post that explores figuring out what I really want and the joy of knowing exactly what I want
– A list of monthly creative accomplishments because I sometimes don’t feel I’ve done anything at all if I don’t write it all down.
These are soul breadcrumbs. They’re for me first. If they lead someone to my work, all the better.
Author Strategy #2: My Website Is the True Home of My Work
I’ll still be on Amazon, Kobo, Spotify, and wherever else readers may look for me—but those are waystations. The Spiritual Eclectic is the hearth of my online home, as it has been for 20 years.
This is where readers can explore my archive while I work to update the oldies, download books and audiobooks directly (soon), and read thoughts that haven’t been flattened by an algorithm’s demand for rage-baiting. SEO? I use it—but only in ways that reflect what I actually care about.
Author Strategy #3: Author Strategy #3: I Choose Rhythm Over Reach
I no longer force myself to post weekly, release monthly, or fill in a content calendar. My rhythm is seasonal, emotional, sometimes lunar. I write when something stirs. I post when something insists.
No more high-pressure release schedule. No more guilt. Just a living cycle of creation and reflection.
What I’m Really Building
I’m not building a brand. I’m not building a platform. I’m building a legacy of voice—the raw and polished, side by side.
Something between Ursula K. Le Guin’s layered mythology, Anne Lamott’s raw spiritual candor, and a sacred record of what stories can heal in me.
That’s what I want to offer now: not a polished funnel, but a real and resonant voice.
If that’s what you came here for, you’re already home.
Southern Gothic, Book One of the Rites of Passage: magick, betrayal, and a reckoning.
Visit the Book Page →