A Life in Words

Medium Gave Me What 12 Years of Publishing and 23 Books Couldn’t

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

And then it took it away again…

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

It’s coming up two years since I joined the writing platform Medium. For years, various author friends had mentioned it, enthused about it and encouraged me to join, but I resisted because I didn’t think I had the time. Almost two years ago a writer friend messaged me again after reading one of my blogs and finally persuaded me to join Medium by asserting that my blog topics and style were just the sort of thing that did well on Medium.

I gave in and joined and I quickly discovered he was right! Once I had joined the Partner Programme and was eligible to earn from my essays, articles, stories and poems, I found the boosts, the positive comments and the money came flowing in.

I was overjoyed. I felt validated. I felt like a real writer.

You’d think that after 12 years of publishing and 23 books released, I’d feel like a real writer, but the truth is, I don’t. Not much has changed for me during those 12 years. I have never had the spare money to throw at advertising my books, but I have done everything they tell you to do to get your books noticed. One of the main pieces of advice I recall reading at the time, was to get on with writing the next book, because once you have more books out there, it all gets easier.

I have never found that to be true. From the moment I published The Mess of Me in 2013, to the moment I released its sequel The Mess Of Us in 2025, I have made a few sales a month. Yes, some months are better than others, and I have never, ever had a month without sales. I am told that for an indie author with no advertising budget, that is not too shabby. And I do agree – with the billions of other books to compete with out there and the social media algorithms wanting you to pay to be seen, it is extremely hard to get sales and make it.

A few years back I reached out to some successful indie authors to ask what their secret was. The answer was not surprising – money. These authors were able to spend hundreds of pounds marketing their books at the start and now they don’t have to. They’ve made a name for themselves, and gained a loyal following.

I am constantly shouting into the abyss, despite how hard I work, despite how many books I write and publish, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews and a handful of awards… I cannot do any better. I am stuck right where I was at the start.

So, although I am still as addicted to writing as ever, and I will never stop as long as I have these ideas in my head, I am honestly hard-pressed to feel like a real writer most days. It doesn’t help that my close family and friends don’t give a shit and refuse to do the one thing they could do to support me in my life.

You can imagine how elated I felt when Medium started rewarding me so quickly. I was so happy! People were reading and commenting on my work. I was getting boosted regularly. Somehow, I was doing it right! And I was getting paid! I was making extra money, more than I had dreamed of to be honest. It made a massive difference to our finances and I even started thinking about putting some away and using it to better market my books.

Then in January, everything changed.

No one knows why and as far as I can tell, the answers are still not terribly forthcoming. Views, reads and earnings plummeted. At the same time, AI slop, bots, scammers and spammers were going through the roof and basically ruining it for everyone. Some say the drop in earnings is a reflection of Medium getting to grips with all that… But I don’t know.

I wasn’t too bad off in January because I’d been boosted a few times in December. January was awful. I barely made anything, and February was even worse. No boosts – which is a shame but not the be all and end all. I once made $15 on a short story that wasn’t boosted. It would take me a long time to make $15 from my books. No kidding.

By the time March arrived I felt like giving up. Millions of writers had jumped ship to Substack and I did the same, though I kept my Medium account. I still posted in February, but not as much. I suppose I had a crisis of confidence. I kept taking it personally. What had I done wrong? Had my writing declined in quality? Was the stuff I wrote just not wanted anymore? I still can’t figure it out.

Substack is great, by the way, and is shaping up to be one of my favourite places to hang out. It’s newsletters, any kind of writing, and social media all wrapped up in one. It took me a little while to get myself settled in, but at the moment I am posting an end of the month author newsletter, an end of the week round-up, and any poems or short stories I would normally put on Medium, I now put on Substack first.

Substack is a lot of fun but it is not as easy to make money there. Money is raised from having paid subscribers. I feel grateful enough to have any subscribers, whether there or here on my trusty old blog. To ask them to pay seems a lot.

I’ve set mine up for paid but have no paid subs yet and I don’t expect to get any for a long time. Still, I am happy to have almost 100 subscribers who I really hope are genuinely interested in me and my books. Let’s see what happens.

Back to Medium – I am not ready to give up on it just yet. It was foolish to ever rely on it for an income, and I didn’t, not really. It was just very handy extra money that made life easier for a bit. I am hanging around to see what happens, and like everyone else, I guess I am trying to crack the code again.

I decided to up my game in March and my content has increased back to my usual levels. It’s not making a difference so far and at this rate it is soon going to be hard to recoup the $5 you pay to be a member.

It makes me feel sad, in all honesty. All I ever wanted in my life was to be a writer. I am a writer and on good days I am incredibly proud of myself, my books, and the work I put in. I couldn’t give up writing, if I tried. It’s just what I do. It’s who I am.

But for a while there, Medium made me feel like a real writer. You know, someone whose words get read by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Someone who uses writing money to pay the bills. It was nice while it lasted but now I am right back where I began.

There had to be an answer somewhere. I guess I will keep on looking.

Giving up is not an option. And for all its faults and ups and downs, I will continue to publish writing on Medium. Writing there has given me an outlet for other types of work, such as essays, articles and poems, and like I always tell the kids I work with, writing in many formats and writing as often as you can, is how you get better.

I’m in it for the long haul.

Giving Myself Permission to Draw Reminds Me Of When I Gave Myself Permission To Write

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Reclaiming my love of drawing

When I was a child I’d lose hours alone with a notebook, writing stories about lost and neglected animals and illustrating them myself. If you’d asked me back then I would have told you I longed to be an author and I’d also have told you how much I loved drawing. I did go on to study GCSE Art but that was where my attempts to draw came to an end. I stuck with writing for longer – though it fizzled out when I became a mother and I lost an entire decade where I did not write at all.

As a teenager, I used to sketch the characters in the stories I was working on, including The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, but post aged sixteen, I barely drew again. That’s as far as I allowed my skills to develop.

It’s sad when we grow up and lose our creativity and it happens all the time and to most people. Children are naturally creative in everything they do. They are curious about materials, they like to dance, move around, play make believe, sing, make noise, scribble and paint and make up stories. They don’t worry about being ‘good’ at it and they certainly don’t entertain the idea of making a ‘career’ out of it.

Yet as adults it is those two concerns that inevitably lead to us distancing ourselves from the creative pursuits we used to enjoy.

I remember going through a phase as a teenager where I would write little poems onto notepaper then illustrate the edges and paint over with water colours. I remember being thrilled with the results! Years later, when I finally got back into writing, I told myself it was just novel writing and that poetry was not my thing. Even when reclaiming writing, I was still putting up barriers to my creativity.

My journey with writing will never be over and I’m happy to say that as the years passed I naturally found myself progressing to embrace all forms of writing. Novels, short stories, flash fiction, essays, articles and yes, poetry! I love them all and practice them all every week.

What stopped me writing for a decade was not thinking I was good enough and not believing I could earn money from it. I’m so relieved that the urge continued to persist inside of me and that eventually it grew too big to ignore. I finally gave in and the dam burst in spectacular fashion. I recently published my twenty-third book, and earn monthly from writing in various forms on Medium. I’ve also had essays and articles published by various magazines over the years.

I have confidence in my writing now, but I still embrace progression and experimentation with it.

Back to drawing. Recently I started to get a very strong urge to draw. It reminded me very much of those urges to write I eventually gave into. It’s like a little bit of the old you poking relentlessly at your brain demanding to be let in, remembered and nurtured.

I started feeling like I wanted to create a graphic novel version of Black Hare Valley for crying out loud, that’s how strong the urge was. I gave in, to some extent. I didn’t plan to. But I was buying some supplies for my kids writing clubs in The Range and spotted some nice sketchbooks and before I knew it I had tucked one under my arm. It felt like giving myself a treat. Giving myself permission.

I’ve started playing around with ideas of sketches for Black Hare Valley. I’ve had fun with a few art tutorials and workbooks and had some helpful tips from my son who is studying A-Level Art. I’ve been pleased with my efforts but do you know what instantly occurred to me when I examined them?

one of the hares I’ve drawn for Black Hare Valley – just practicing!

They are the same level as the character drawings I did as a teenager. I haven’t gotten any better or matured my skills because I did not keep it up. Imagine how much better I would be at drawing now if I had not pushed that side of me away for so long!

Now every time I feel a bit embarrassed about my artistic efforts, and every time I feel like I am wasting my time or shouldn’t be doing it, I remind myself of how and why writing came back to me. It came back to me by itself. It hammered at my mind until I let it back in and once it had me in its grip again it refused to ever let go.

the bookshop in Black Hare Valley – a major location!

And because I stuck with it and practiced it, and tried new things, and studied it, and learnt from others, and got feedback, and kept going…. I got better!

I need to remind myself that the same thing applies to art.

the white hare – a character in Black Hare Valley – needs work!

My challenge is this: I want to illustrate the entire Black Hare Valley series myself. To do this I need to discover, embrace and improve my own style, much like writers do with their voice. I feel excited. I feel motivated. Whatever happens, it is good to have a challenge and a new hobby!

the ruins in Black Hare Valley – a major location
The raven in Black Hare Valley – another character – just pencil so far, will be going over with pen.

This Week I Had Five WIPS Vying For Attention In My Head

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

I Need More Me’s!

Image by TyliJura from Pixabay

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll probably know that I find it impossible to work on just one writing project at a time. Ideally, I would love to. One story idea, one plot, one set of characters, one job to do! I envy writers whose minds work like that. It must feel very in control.

It’s never that way with me. There is always the book ready to be published that needs quotes posting, cover sorting, final edits and so on. There is always the current priority work-in-progress and sometimes that’s a series, not a standalone. And there are always the future books, the ideas, all in various stages!

It’s been like that this week, and then some.

First, I am trying to draw attention to The Mess Of Us which came out on Valentines Day. That means promoting it as best I can and creating graphics of quotes from the book and reviews as they come in.

Second, I am preparing my next book for release at the end of the year. I need to sort out the cover, finalise the blurb and send it to my editor. Recently I read it through on my kindle to pick up any lingering typos or plot holes and found it to be a very clean read. But it still needs that professional edit and proofread. I hope to release The Dark Finds You towards the end of the year.

Third, I’ve been adding stories and poems to my next anthology Dirty Feet. I’ve no idea when I will release this, but every now and then I add new bits and pieces to it, so it’s always on the go.

Next, I’ve been working on my official work-in-progress, Black Hare Valley. It was never meant to be a series but book one inspired two more books and then I had the idea of a diary style companion book. That’s what I am writing at the moment, and once that is finished, I will be going through each book in the series with a fine toothed comb, ensuring there are no plot holes and a clear timeline that makes sense!

But as well as all this I started getting the urge to create a graphic novel style version of Black Hare Valley. Don’t ask me why. I can’t even draw very well! I haven’t done anything about this. But the urge is there and it’s very strong!

Plus, I’ve been thinking a lot about which book I will work on once Black Hare Valley is complete and decided it will be The Seventh Child, a family mystery thriller. This idea has been building for a while, and I already had the whole plot, the location and the character bios in a notebook. A while back I wrote the first chapter, because, why not? This week, this book has been screaming at me to get on with it! Please, someone tell it it has to wait!

On top of that another book idea keeps growing and swelling and this week I figured out exactly how I will tell it. Anya and Cody Start The Apocalypse is an idea that came to me in bits and pieces with the characters showing up first. I eventually started a notebook to keep track of things and soon had character bios and locations and a loose plot. That plot has since tightened up but I was still unsure of how to tell the story. Then I figured it out. Epistolary style! The book will be written by another narrator who is writing a dissertation project on Anya and Cody after their story is over. It will be told by the narrator compiling diaries, letters, news reports and social media posts in order to explain what happened. I’ve written diary style books before, (The Mess Of Me and The Mess Of Us, plus the companion diary for Black Hare Valley) but I’ve never tried anything like this so I am really, really excited! And I want to do it now!

But it has to wait! I will carry on adding bits to the notebook of course. But that doesn’t mean it will shut up.

My head is full of all these stories all the time. I wish I could create some extra me’s or some extra hands to get it all done. I think I will feel better once I finish the Black Hare Valley diary book. I can then fully concentrate on getting the whole series ready for publication in 2026. I would love to have the first book ready to go in January 2026, for example. The rest of the books will follow one by one throughout that year, and in that time I will be busy writing The Seventh Child.

Then it will be Anya and Cody’s turn…

What is wrong with me?

The Mess Of Us – Q&A with Chantelle Atkins

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Here’s an interview I did this week for our little indie collective Chasing Driftwood Books!

A gripping sequel to her 2016 novel, The Mess of Me, this book dives back into the world of Joe and Lou and these of identity and resilience… Let’s get started!

The Mess of Me was a huge success, what inspired you to return to this story after a decade?

A. A sequel was in the pipeline years ago. I had always wondered what happened next to Lou and Joe. The first book ends with a sort of happy ending, but with lots of questions about what would happen after the dramatic and violent events of that book. A few years back I started writing the sequel when I got the idea of a teenage pregnancy. I was fascinated with how they would both cope with that on top of recovering from the events of the first book. It then took me a whole to get around to writing it due to other projects, but it was the teenage pregnancy idea that really sparked off the rest of it. That, and always wanting to explore Leon’s character more. He is the villain of the first book and I always feel like villains have a story to tell. How did they become that way, for example? Are they capable of redemption? So I felt like he deserved a story. 

How has your writing style or approach changed in the past ten years? 

A. It’s probably the same! I still start with loose ideas in my head that eventually end up as notes in a notebook which I’ll then add to whenever I get more ideas. Eventually there will be enough plot to get started so that’s what I do. I rarely plan the whole book in advance, but I always know what’s going to happen for the next few chapters at least. I’m probably better at self-editing and being ruthless with the word count though. I think I am better at that now.

Did you always plan to write a sequel, or was there a moment when you knew this story wasn’t finished? 

A. I didn’t plan a sequel at the time, no. It was years later that I got the idea for the teenage pregnancy and the rest grew from there. Plus, Lou is like a lot of my characters. She would chat to me from time to time. I’d tune into her and wonder how life was going. If that keeps happening, it starts to feel like a sequel is inevitable.

What challenges did you face in reconnecting with the characters and world after so much time?

A.I reread the first book before I started the sequel. I then revamped and republished it! That pretty much gave me what I needed to pick those characters up again. Plus, they had never really left me, so it was not hard to tune into them for the sequel. As for the world, these books are part of a bigger inter-connected universe of books and I was still writing books in that universe, so again, it was not challenging to reconnect with it. It was a pleasure! I know them all so well it felt like coming home.

Were there any major plot points or character arcs that surprised you while writing the sequel?

A. No, I always had it in mind that Leon would come out of prison and Lou and Joe would have to deal with that. Would Joe want to see him, for example? Would he want to forgive him? What would Leon be like now? Worse, or a reformed character? I was really curious about that and really excited to further explore Leon’s character and back story. Parts of the plot revealed themselves to be as I wrote it, but it all felt natural so I just went with the flow.

How do you think readers’ perceptions of the first book will shape their experience of the sequel?

A.I hope they like it! A few people have read it without reading the first one so I have every confidence it also works as a standalone, but I really hope readers of the first book enjoy it too! There were a few readers that often mentioned it was their favourite book of mine and they’d love a sequel, so in some ways I had them in mind while writing it. I expect they’ll know what’s coming in terms of the gritty storylines and references to eating disorders, self-harm and drugs. They’ll also know it’s another diary style format.

Have your own life experiences over the last decade influenced the themes or direction of this book?

A.Yes. To be honest, Lou is the character most based on me. I have suffered with eating disorders in the past and the truth is, they never really go away. They follow you about and haunt you and wait for opportunities to take control again. They’re like little voices in your head that want to convince you to trust them, that they can make everything all right again. I’m much older than I was when I had these issues, but as Lou finds out in The Mess of Us, often when things go wrong, those little voices come back. So you have to be wary and careful. You can’t let your guard down.  Forms of self-harm can be addictive and can be coping strategies you come to rely on. I have also experienced a miscarriage, which is another hard-hitting storyline in the book. That part was very hard to write but I hope I did it justice. 

What kind of balance did you try to strike between nostalgia for longtime fans and accessibility for new readers?

A.That was the aim, to give readers of the first book a sequel they would enjoy and let them find out what happened next, but also write a book new readers could enjoy on its own. That meant Lou and the other characters had to sometimes mention or explain what had happened previously, but you have to be careful not to make it boring or repetitive for the original readers, so it is hard!

If you could go back and change anything about the first book, would you?

A.I would probably make it shorter!

Do you see this sequel as the end of the story, or is there potential for more in the future?

A.It’s the end of the story for Lou and Joe, as far as I know anyway! But it is not the end of the story for Leon. He will be back in a new book towards the end of the year. We will finally have his point of view and his full story. The book will be called The Dark Finds You and I’d describe it as a crime thriller. It is also a crossover book which will be enjoyable to anyone who has read the books in the shared universe. If you’ve read The Holds End trilogy, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series, Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature or The Mess Of Me and The Mess Of Us, you will find characters from all those books returning!

Thank you, Chantelle!

The Mess of Us is one book in a connected universe made up of various series penned by Atkins. You can grab your copy of The Mess of Us by clicking here.

Or start the journey from the beginning today with the groundbreaking 2013 novel, The Mess of Me.