A few months after my fiancé was diagnosed with kidney failure, I walked out of my well-paid (but hated) corporate job, with no plan other than to never go back.
So far, I never have.
Terry started dialysis.
I started a blog.
Although my blog started off as an ‘online diary’ (look, it was the noughties, OK?), it quickly turned into a full-time job, which paid the bills for over a decade, and made me realise that it really was possible to make a living doing something I loved — in this case, writing about my life: including our move to a tiny village in the Scottish countryside, which was absolutely nothing like all of those small town romance books I’d been reading had led me to believe it would be.
But it hasn’t been easy. In the years that followed my not-so-dramatic exit from corporate life, I’ve tried everything I can think of to avoid having to go back to it; from my ill-fated attempt to start an eBay business from my spare room, to my current job writing romance books set in my native Scotland. (There was also a brief stint ghostwriting writing Victorian orphan romance books, but the less said about that, the better…)
Having stumbled into romance writing more or less by accident, though, it turns out that the real challenge is continuing to do it... because writing books might be my dream job, but it’s also an extraordinary difficult way to make a living, and most authors end up having to get a ‘real’ job alongside it to pay the bills.
I’m not going to do that, though.
Partly because I’ve never been into the idea that being an author means having to squeeze writing into the gaps left by a ‘real’ job — I want writing to be the ‘real’ job — but also because the thought of having to go back to the corporate world, or any kind of traditional employment, really, remains my biggest non-existential fear. (Well, that and crabs. I’m absolutely terrified of crabs…)
I absolutely refuse to go back to crying in the shower every morning before work, because the thought of the next 9 hours feels a lot like being sent to one of those Victorian workhouses I used to write about. I refuse to dedicate the rest of my life to helping other people get rich. I refuse to accept that it’s ‘normal’ to spend most of your waking hours doing something you hate. And, most of all, I refuse to give up on my dream of living a life I love… and that doesn’t involve sitting in a windowless office for 9 hours every day.
Instead, I’ve been doing my best to supplement the income I make from my books with other types of creative work which can be done from home, and which don’t leave me feeling too burnt out and exhausted to write my books.
And that’s what this newsletter is about.
It’s about making a living doing something you love. Living a soft, slow life, that gives you space to breathe, and doesn’t leave you constantly wondering, ‘is this all there is?’ It’s for anyone who’s ever wanted to quit their job, turn their back on ‘hustle culture’ and move to a small village in Scotland where nothing ever happens, but at least you don’t get asked to join a Teams call every five minutes.
As a subscriber you’ll get:
a behind-the-scenes look at what author life is really like in a small Scottish village
honest insights into my various side-hustles, and how much I earn from them
a first glimpse of what I’m writing, and how I go about turning ideas into finished books
a look at all of the ways I try to romanticize my life as an anxious introvert who likes books more than people
the occasional rabbit hole: because there’s more to life than books, you know (but not much more…)
Want in? Just click on the button below!
