Alex Beecroft

 So, when Captain’s Surrender was accepted for publication, I was over the moon, and I attempted to do my best to meet the demands of the romance publishing industry by putting out as many new books in the shortest time possible. I managed approximately a book and a half a year, and I was at it for ten years.

Unfortunately I was in an industry where you need to produce a book every three months, and I simply could not do it. My books got thinner in terms of characterization and plotting because I just didn’t have time to think. Eventually I burnt out and I could not think of writing without dread for the next five years.

Since I stopped, AI has been launched, which I refuse to touch and which will make it even less possible for me to keep up with the most prolific authors. But that’s fine. I’ll just lean into my strengths, which is producing maybe one extremely weird and non-marketable book – of a genre that doesn’t really exist – in a year and publishing them myself.

Now I am just beginning to write again, at a pace of 500 words a day, and although I can write slice of life and fanfic, I still can’t look at romance. It may come back, in its own time. In the mean time at least I have my other two pen names to be getting on with. Watch this space, I guess.