A Life Between Personas

When did I become all these different characters in my own life?

And why am I doing it?

Author. Publisher. Designer. Social media expert. Marketing student. Employee. Wife. Dog mum.

And, occasionally, a woman wandering through the house asking where she put the brush.

I get up at seven o’clock these days. From bed, I go straight to my little corner in the living room and open either my laptop or my tablet, depending on which persona has decided to begin the day.

Then I get to work.

Morning brain is a wonderful thing. I am not convinced it could function particularly well in the real world, but in the worlds of my books, it unfurls to its full potential in those early hours.

I might write a few hundred words. I might create a social media post or open Affinity and work on a design.

Or I might spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for that blimmin brush.

After a couple of hours, I feed the dogs and take them on their morning stroll. Then I get ready for work, check how much time remains before I need to leave, sit back down and begin something I believe — often wrongly — I can fit into that window.

One day, I may learn.

Then I drive to work.

The shoes go on, and real life waits beyond the borders of the dark realms taking shape inside my mind.

Until I return home.

Then I sit back down and work some more.

By now, nearly every day of my week has become a fourteen-hour shift followed by uneasy sleep — and, occasionally, a fictional character arriving in the middle of the night to inform me that I have written something incorrectly.

They are very considerate like that.

Reality Versus The Dark Realms

People who understand at least remotely what my life involves sometimes ask me:

How do you do it?

Or they say:

I wish I had your brain.

How do I do it?

I honestly do not know.

I have no idea how I managed to learn nearly every skill necessary to write, publish and promote my own books within ten months. I do not know how I balanced writing, publishing, design and a social media presence — and still somehow wrote half a million words.

Before you decide that sounds impossible, I should admit that I was off work for eight weeks during those ten months.

That helped.

Quite a lot, actually.

As for those who wish they had my brain, I would advise you to reconsider.

You have probably never embarrassed yourself by suddenly speaking the wrong language because you spent the entire morning writing in it.

You may never have forgotten three appointments in a row because a plot had taken over every available part of your memory.

And you almost certainly would not want to lose friendships because there was no longer enough time left to nurture them.

That is the side people do not see when they look at three books, a new website, finished designs and an author confidently declaring that another world is already waiting.

They see the finished thing.

They do not see the evenings when I am too tired to speak but still have a chapter burning through my mind. They do not see the ideas scribbled down between one responsibility and the next, or the constant feeling that there is something else I should be doing.

Something unfinished.

Something waiting.

So Why Am I Still Doing This?

Because the best friends stayed.

Because my husband somehow still recognises me beneath the collection of personas — and accepts that sometimes he is speaking to his wife, and sometimes to the publisher, the designer or the author who has physically returned home but is mentally still standing in a Demon Realm.

Because I love every part of it.

I thrive on the challenge. I love learning something I could not do yesterday and discovering that, somehow, I can do it today. I love watching a story become a manuscript, a manuscript become a book and a book find its way into the hands of someone I have never met.

I have so many stories inside my head that I hardly know which one to write first.

And there are extraordinary people in my life whom I would never have met if I had not followed Sinia and Ashan through the dark passes of Penumbria.

Readers. Reviewers. Other authors. People from countries I have never visited, who somehow found my world and chose to remain in it for a while.

So perhaps these are not separate personas after all.

Perhaps they are simply different pieces of the same woman — the one who wrote a single scene on a new laptop and accidentally changed the shape of her own life.

The author creates the worlds.

The publisher sends them beyond her reach.

The designer gives them a face.

The social media expert tries to persuade the right people to look closer.

The marketing student is learning how to do all of that deliberately.

The employee pays for it.

The wife and dog mum remind her that another world exists outside it.

And the woman looking for the brush?

She keeps all of us humble.