My pen name is Sara Yardley, and I am a fantasy fiction author from the UK. If you are reading my first ever post, you probably already know that, but I wanted to start sharing some tips and tricks for other authors as well as other things that might interest my readers.
I was going to start this blog with some information about how I manage my time when writing, but it felt weird to do that with absolutely no context, so I'll start off by giving a little bit of information about my background and my experience with writing.
Background
When I first started my journey as an author under the name Sara Yardley, I was working full time as a fashion designer and couturier. I had dabbled in writing as a career in the past - I used to be a freelance writer for the website equivalent of Ancient Aliens, I have had a lot of in-depth tutorials published in specialist sewing magazines, and I have my own physical sewing book which showcases my work as a designer and the methods I use to construct and embellish the things that I make. So, as an author of non-fiction pieces I have plenty of experience. You can see some of the articles I have written for a sewing site below - I have removed my surname for privacy reasons, but it gives an idea of the sort of thing I had the most experience with.
I have also written fiction for as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, back in the early 2000s, I used to publish my stories on a website called Quizilla. You can read about what the site was all about here, but the basics are that a lot of young teenagers used it to publish work (especially fanfictions) which were not in formats accepted on fanfiction.org. It was kind of a mix between Buzzfeed Quizzes and sites like Wattpad nowadays. My work on there was episodic fiction based on the life I daydreamed of leading. In my stories the protagonists were badass rock stars who were swept away on amazing adventures. I had a few followers through that, but as social media was only starting to emerge there wasn't the same sort of culture around following people online and it didn't ever progress to anything serious.
I continued writing fiction privately, and I filled a lot of notebooks with work that I never considered sharing anywhere. The work I wrote for myself was mostly fan fiction based in the world of a series of books I used to love that had a super disappointing ending after years waiting for the final installment. I didn't like the ending, so I wrote my own.
Present
My journey as Sara Yardley started with some targeted adverts for episodic reading apps. You probably know the ones I mean - they tend to be very cringeworthy, and they are usually filled with spelling errors and very colorful plotlines. (I'll add at this point that they aren't all that bad anymore. I guess that the shockingly bad ones are used as clickbait, but there are some brilliant quality stories advertised the same way nowadays, they aren't all terrible!) I kept on getting the ads, and every time I read them I thought that I could do so much better.
I spotted the patterns in the content, the kind of characters and scenarios that were recurring time and time again, and I thought it might be fun to write something like that and try to play with the tropes rather than being dismissive and saying 'I could do better'.
I'm not sure why I decided to actually share the book. I guess it was a bit of a throwback to when I posted on Quizilla, and I was feeling nostalgic. I didn't expect anyone to actually read it - it was just one book out of tens of thousands, and there are plenty of wonderfully written books with incredible plotlines when you actually download the apps, so I wasn't expecting anyone to pick mine.
To my surprise and delight people did read my work, and they enjoyed it, and I ended up with a contract to finish the book exclusively on the platform.
At that point, it was still just a bit of fun. I was enjoying writing, I was starting to make some money from it, and I ended up with some loyal readers who encouraged me to keep posting even when I went through some difficult spots personally.
Writing got me through the unexpected death of a friend. It got me through moving back to the UK at very short notice when I had been living abroad for 5 years. I have epilepsy, and it also helped me to do something productive during periods I am unable to sew safely.
I ended up being offered a position as a full-time writer for Dreame, and as I started to publish more, my work became popular enough that I can now sustain myself through my writing.
Future Posts
Now you know a bit more about me, and what my background is, and I hope that it explains why I'm motivated to share some information about writing on this blog. I've got plenty of experience writing informative articles, and I know that I am good at it. I also have plenty of tips and tricks that I would like to share, and advice about writing for episodic writing apps. I'm happy to consider requests for articles, but in the mean time I am going to be working on the following:
Time Management for Authors
Applying for Contracts
Book Cover Design
World Building and Character Development
Writing Erotica
Outlining Plots
How to Write Episodically
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and I hope that you have enjoyed finding out a bit more about me!
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