TJWest Book Blog: First Series

Not a lot of people know about my very first series - The Rain Series. In 2014, I published November Rain. I thought I was hot stuff when it came to this book. Oh, how wrong I was. In my mind, I thought this was THE BOOK; the hottest book I could ever write. Again, how wrong I was. Yes, I was most definitely proud of achieving this milestone in my life - publishing my first book! How freaking cool was that! In high school I wrote a book called Wishing Nights - and again, I thought it was da bomb. I had wished there was a way I could have published it, but back in the early 90's, it wasn't possible. There was no such thing as self-publishing. So when I discovered you could actually self pub your own book, I took the chance and succeeded. However...I should have slowed my process down, edited and re-edited NRain until I hated it - like I now do with all my others. In my opinion - and certainly other opinions - it was not a good book. It was poorly written and needed extra care. I did that a year later. The story needed a lot of work and it paid off. Even though it's 100 times better than the original, there are still readers who think it sucked balls. I don't blame them, but seriously....this was my first BOOK. Some writers make a success after their first published book, but some - like me - it takes almost 8 books to get your writing skills down to where you know you are a good at story telling. It's taken me that long - 8 books to get it right. Of course I still have my moments of thinking "this shit sucks" but that is what my editor and beta's are for. They help me as much as they can to polish my babies to make them sound readable and worth reading. If it weren't for them, my books would still suck.
I read a lot of books, and if you continue to read, then you learn how to write well - better. I am so grateful to reading. I have learned so much in the last 3 years and continue to get better and to help those that are starting out. The more you read, the more you write, the better you'll get at storytelling.
And on that note, here are my first 3 books you can download on Kindle Unlimited.