How long have you been writing?
Short answer? Forever.
Long answer, because I know that’s way more interesting? You’d better get comfortable.
At first, I made up stories in my mind. I suppose most children do. Except instead of growing out of the habit, I started to put those stories to paper. Or rather, to screen—at the time, we had 386 computer at home, running on windows 3.11 with Word Perfect installed. I used to say for stories to a floppy disk, which thankfully has been lost to time.
(Actually, I know it is, but modern computers have no way to read floppy disks and the file extension is outdated, so the world is safe from my earliest creations.)
During my teen years, my stories shifted from self-insertion adventures to fantasy quests, and of course I used to add the infamous “like Tolkien” when I was talking about my writing.
(At the time, I couldn’t fathom that Tolkien’s style was indeed too wordy, too slow and altogether too literary, and not quite what most people looked for in a fiction bestseller.)
Something happened when I joined University though. After a year studying toward an engineering degree, I switched to a linguistics degree, and one of my professors there remarked on my writing. She encouraged me to pursue it, not as a “hobby” as everyone else up to that point had intimated, but as a career.
(And would you believe that up to that point, I had never thought writing could be career for mere mortals? I always thought it was a matter of being Chosen by the Mighty Publishing Houses, and that pursuing writing was akin to wanting to be a rockstar god.)
Sometimes, it takes people believing in you for you to believe in yourself.
I started writing during my college years. Less epic fantasy, more urban style. I challenged myself to finishing a readable novel, and the more I wrote the more I realized that it was a craft as much as it was an art. Rules and theories that needed learning before I could think of breaking them.
I like to think “I’ve made it” as a writer. I like to think I understand enough to deliver good stories, while accepting that my next book will be my best yet. Because of course there are things I wish to learn… But that’s a path meant to be walked all through life. The important bit, finding the path? I like to think I found mine.
Fall
From Grace
Exile
of Angels Book 1
by
Ron C. Nieto
Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Hell
was meant to be a timeless prison. It’s not.
Henry
Black, former Archangel of Secret Knowledge, wants some peace of mind
after untold millennia locked up in Hell, but the guilt of inhabiting
a body that is not his own and of having left behind his brothers and
sisters still damned to solitary confinement eats him up inside.
Old
sins are hard to cleanse.
He
thinks he can atone by doing the right thing—play the older brother
to his host body’s kin while upturning every secret buried in
Creation until he finds a way to free every single angel who fell—but
with every fact uncovered, he finds himself one step further from the
release he craves and one step closer to more chains that
bind.
Maybe
the only way to be at peace with himself is to face a new war head
on…
Rise
To Freedom
Exile
of Angels Book 2
I
am a demon possessing the body of the late Malik Sadik. Truth.
Yes,
the former Archangel of Truth now inhabits the body of coffeehouse
barista Malik Sadik. But Malik wasn’t a willing participant to this
possession, not like Henry Black. The human Henry Black willingly
gave over his body to the Archangel of Secret Knowledge. Malik, on
the other hand, was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I
still feel human. Truth.
Yes,
Malik still feels human. But he’s not human and a war is brewing.
When Hell threatens to unravel and its black hunger eats and corrupts
those Malik has learned to care about, he must make a choice between
what he knew as an angel and what he has begun to feel as a man.
So,
what happens when Truth isn’t right?
Ron
C. Nieto is a fantasy and romance author who has been writing in her
secluded fortress for the longest time. Recently, she had a talk with
her cat and decided that she should share her creations, because it
was selfish to hoard them all for herself.
Follow
the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!
Posts
