books

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.

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.

The Mess Of Us Is Released Next Week!

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Only a week to go until my 23rd book is released…

https://books2read.com/u/4NNka6

Exactly one week from now, my 23rd book, which just so happens to be the sequel to my first ever book, will be released! The Mess Of Us came out way back in 2013.

This is very exciting for several reasons. Of course, it is always exciting to release a new book and it never gets old holding that book in your hands and knowing that you did it!

It’s extra exciting because it’s taken me so long to get around to writing the sequel. I did have ideas for it years ago but didn’t do anything with them for a very long time. Then, a couple of years back I started to think about how the first book ended and that got me wondering exactly what the characters would have done next…

I decided to set the sequel two years after the events of the first book. A violent altercation between Joe and his oldest brother, Leon, led everyone in the book to an uncertain place, fraught with anger, fear, resentment and guilt.

I started thinking a lot about Leon. He is a villain through and through in the first book. Main character and narrator Lou describes him best:

“Leon scares me. I don’t like being in his presence. He makes me feel uncomfortable, but I am unable to really articulate why. He wants to be a hard man; he wants to not care about anyone or anything, as if somehow, he believes this to be the best way to go through life. It is what he seeks to achieve. Not giving a shit. Dealing drugs, if that is what he is doing, (and we can strongly suppose that it is), is just his latest ploy to try to achieve this. He is bizarrely determined to live as crooked and brutal a life as possible, and you can see it in every inch of him – his empty, hard eyes, his lack of remorse or empathy for anything or anyone; the way his body ripples and bristles, as if every muscle within it has been injected with pure blind rage. I wonder whom he is trying to impress, and I can only imagine that it is himself.”

But there are moments in The Mess Of Me where Lou concedes that Leon didn’t exactly have a kind or caring upbringing. As the oldest, he is the scapegoat in their dysfunctional and often violent family:

‘Yeah, he grabbed the frying pan and clocked Mick over the head with it. Jesus Christ there was blood everywhere. He had to have eight stitches.’
‘And the police turned up.’
‘And arrested Leon. Mum and Mick told them to.’
I turn my head and look at the side of Joe’s face. ‘Joe, I’ve never really thought about it much until now, but you do know that is really disgusting, don’t you?’ I watch as Joe nods back at me. ‘He was about fourteen then? He was just trying to protect his mum. I’ve never ever felt sorry for Leon before, but thinking about it now, that was pretty harsh on him.’
‘He’s hard to feel sorry for.’
‘Do you think your mum and Mick ever feel sorry about that? Letting him get taken away, when it was them fighting in the first place? I couldn’t live with myself.’
Joe snorts again. ‘They always think they’re right,’ he replies. ‘Doesn’t matter what you say or do. Doesn’t matter if you prove them wrong or whatever. Neither of them are ever fucking wrong, ever. So no, I don’t think they would ever feel guilty about that.’

It was moments like this one that made Lou wonder about Leon. In The Mess Of Me, she was disgusted by him and frightened of him, but she was also endlessly curious about him and his secret, shady life.

It made me think what had driven Leon to a life of crime. Lack of money and parental support at home are often factors that drive youngsters towards crime. Children from deprived areas are far more likely to be groomed into running drugs for gangs, for example, and in The Mess of Us, as both Lou and Joe attempt to get past what Leon did, she finally discovers how he got into crime:

‘Leon, how old were you were you first started doing it?’
‘Thirteen,’ he replies without hesitation. My eyes grow wider. I think back, trying to picture him at thirteen. He had longer hair back then. He was always bigger than us but he wasn’t huge, or muscled. He was just a kid. I’m still staring, feeling dazed as the realisation hits me. He frowns back at me. ‘What?’
‘I mean… How? How did…’
‘This older kid at school,’ he says. ‘He let us try a bit of grass for free. After school, walking home. Me and Travis, some others. Not long after that he wanted us to pay for it and not long after that he wanted us to, you know. Run errands.’
Shit. I slump back and stare ahead. I had never imagined it like this. I had only ever seen Leon as the aggressor, the bully, the criminal. I had never once imagined that someone else had done this to him, lured him in, made him promises, got him on side. At thirteen…

The Mess Of Us is about a lot of things. The main plot follows Lou and Joe grappling with an unplanned pregnancy alongside dealing with the fact Leon has just been released from prison. But it is also a story about forgiveness and redemption and about what happens to people to turn them hard and cold…

And what is even more exciting for me is that by the time I finished writing it, The Mess Of Us gave me an amazing and unexpected gift!

An idea for a brand new book! A book connecting all of my characters who lives inhabit and cross paths within the same universe. A book that would tie up all of their original stories, whilst dealing with the mystery of a missing child, and delving into Leon more fully as a character.

I had the best fun writing it. It was the easiest and fastest book I’ve ever written, probably because I already knew all the characters so well!

It’s called The Dark Finds You and I hope to release it towards the end of 2025, so stay tuned. I will be posting a lot about it and how it connects to my other books nearer the time!

Meanwhile, I’d really appreciate it if you grabbed a copy of The Mess Of Us whilst it’s still just 99p for the ebook! It does help if you have read the first book, but it can certainly be read as a standalone.

Thank you!

Here is the blurb:

“Dear World, so, obviously we made a mess of it. Inevitably. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing to you again, would I?”

What do you do when the man who beat your boyfriend into a coma is about to be released from prison? What do you do when that man is your boyfriend’s older brother who wants to make amends?

Now a couple, Lou and Joe are struggling to get over the traumatic events of two years ago. When Joe’s brother Leon is released from prison, they must decide if either of them are able to forgive and forget what he did.
Meanwhile, an unexpected pregnancy throws their lives into chaos and when tragedy reawakens Lou’s self-destructive tendencies, she faces losing everything they have built. Can she fight her body image demons once again? Can either of them trust Leon? As Joe and Lou try to decide whether bad people can truly change, they are about to have one mess of a summer.