Storytelling is in my blood. I grew up with unfettered access to anything printed with words and bound in a cover. Some of my favorite reads were a collection of short stories from 1922, ten blue-bound books filled with fairy tales and folklore from around the world. That sparked a lifelong love of fantasy and magic in my heart.
Over the years, I had the odd piece in the school paper and have been published in 3 anthologies to date, but never really put my work out for public consumption. Part of it was a lack of work-life balance that didn’t leave much time for creative pursuits, but a much larger part was plain old fear. Fear of rejection, of judgment, of pouring my heart and soul into something I was too involved to see was total tripe. But I’ve reached a point where I need to give it my all, even if I fail.
While traditional publishing brings with it a comforting layer of validation and respectability, the confines of what is deemed worthy by traditional publishing houses is somewhat narrow. The odd genre-breaker may slip through once in a while, but overall there are strict expectations when submitting to traditional publishers. And I have no issue with that. The mass consumption arena is much the same regardless of the product and has a singular goal - appeal to as many as possible as much as possible.
I am not and never will be someone with mass appeal. As an author, I am often described as “quirky”, and as a person “weird” has been the most frequent descriptor used. Quirky and weird is not a mainstream product. I have a tendency to mix genres, and much of my work I can’t fit into a neat little box easily. It’s a little bit chaotic, and not anything the traditional market is looking for.
Why Chaos and Ink? Having long accepted self-publishing as my avenue for unleashing my stories upon the world, I felt the best way to go about that was to create my own LLC. This is by no means required for self-published authors, but it makes a lot of sense come tax time. It also allows my company name to be the registered publisher rather than just my own name and will simplify matters if I choose to branch into other pen names to differentiate between novel genres.
The word Chaos has always seemed to encapsulate my general life, and as for ink - well, there’s a lot of ink involved in the process of publishing, from jotting down notes to printing the physical book. These two words I could easily associate with, and hadn’t yet been taken by another similar company. (There is a tattoo shop with a similar name, but I doubt consumers are likely to mix up the two.)
My only goal is to entertain readers with my quirky, weird tales and to indulge my passion for writing while I’m at it. I have no expectations of becoming a best seller and fully embrace my audience will be niche. It's who I am and all attempts to change into something with more mass appeal have been fruitless to date, so I might as well lean into it.
Two books are scheduled to release this year, and three more next year. I invite you along on the journey, to share in my successes and my inevitable blunders, and to maybe find a new favorite book along the way.
Welcome to Chaos and Ink, where I weave magic out of mayhem!