The Famulus is a six-book series that has consumed the last five years of my life. It stands at around 327,000 words now, not counting how many words of older drafts I’ve tossed out over the years. Some books have had more than ten drafts completed, while I’ve jumped from one scene to another in others and never finished their first draft. I worked on all six books at once, with the first one self-published until I pulled it this month.

This series is my heart and soul.

I came to an important realization that probably anyone reading this will think was incredibly obvious. Just because I want to be a published author doesn’t mean I have to publish everything I write. Some books can be written only for myself. Although I’m going to continue to revise and add to this series, I have no plans to send it out into the world.

I’d always thought the overwhelming fear I felt about anyone reading my work was natural and it was just something I would have to get over. Promotion of my work frightened me. I didn’t want anyone to read it, which led me to ask myself why I had published it in the first place.

What I settled on was that I published it because I wanted to be a published author and reach people with my work, and the way to do that was to put it out into the world so people could read it. Like any creative work, it has its flaws. (The largest flaw in the first book is probably that the stakes aren’t high enough.) It’s not that I’m not proud of it that I’m keeping it to myself. I’ve learned so much from writing this series, and now it’s time to take what I’ve learned and apply it to new projects, building them from the ground up with a good foundation instead of throwing all these characters, emotions, and plot points in at once and hoping they sort themselves out.

I started writing The Famulus when I was 25. The main character, Aberdeen, is so similar in spirit to me (although hopefully not a self-insert Mary Sue, since I try to play on her flaws). Loneliness is an important theme in the series, because I was incredibly lonely when I started writing it. Those books might be fantasy, with magic and immortal characters and supernatural abilities, but the loneliness is real. The story said what I needed a story to say to me at that time in my life, but I realized I couldn’t release it and let other people’s reactions affect the way I thought about it.

Yes, of course, I know not to let other people’s opinions affect my own. But when an author publishes a book or any type of artist releases their work into the world, they lose control over it, and it belongs to other people at that point. I’m selfish about this story, and I don’t want to share it with anyone else.

The only reason I might eventually republish this, years down the road, is that I know the power stories have—how books can save lives, show us we’re not alone, and prove that someone else out there thinks the same weird things we do. I would gladly share it if it would do that for someone else, but I just don’t have enough confidence that I can find those people—my people—right now.

This series helped me discover what I think about some things. It’s my credo. Just because I won’t be sharing this series with anyone doesn’t mean I can’t present those ideas in other stories I’ll write. If those ideas and beliefs don’t show up in anything else I write, they must not have the weight and importance I think they do. Besides, if I thought this was the only good thing I would ever write, why bother with anything else?

The narcissistic side of me wants to share parts of these stories here to give an example of my writing style and voice so you can decide if you’d be interested in reading anything I might publish in the future, like the project I’m currently working on. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll post excerpts (with some context given) or if I’ll reframe them as independent short stories, but I’ll put a few up in the next couple of weeks.