I am at a crossroads, and for the first time in a decade, I am unsure of the way forward. I have dedicated myself to the craft of storytelling with a persistence that should have borne fruit by now, yet despite my efforts, the “breakthrough” remains elusive.
My journey began in the days of CreateSpace, eventually transitioning into Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). However, that transition led to a devastating setback. In an attempt to protect my professional reputation as an educator from a third-party publisher’s threats, I updated my metadata and pen name. Amazon flagged these changes as a violation of their guidelines and terminated my account on July 6, 2025. Despite a year of formal appeals and my commitment to publish exclusively as Nancy Ann Creed, the decision remains firm. After a decade of building a presence there, I am forced to accept that it may be time to let that platform go.
The pursuit of traditional representation has been equally exhausting. I have queried numerous agents for my fantasy series, The Shadow Realm Chronicles, my memoir, Birth After Miscarriage, and my poetry collection, Echoes and Whispers. The result has been hundreds of rejections and a haunting silence. The industry is notoriously risk-averse toward previously published material—especially work tied to a terminated account—leaving me caught in a professional limbo.
I recently moved my catalog to Draft2Digital, and while the platform is functional, it hasn’t yet bridged the gap between my dreams and my reality. For ten years, I’ve told anyone who asks that I’m “just waiting for my books to take off.” I find myself wondering if that moment will ever arrive.
The frustration is compounded by a marketing conundrum that feels like a foreign language. While I am confident in my writing and production skills, the world of SEO, platform-building, and social media engagement is a constant hurdle. I had hoped a traditional agent would shift this burden to a marketing department; instead, I am left to navigate it alone. Even high-effort attempts, like engaging on TikTok, have resulted in views but zero sales.
Despite the exhaustion of teaching 7th-grade math and raising a large family, I continue to explore new avenues. I’ve launched Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee to share “unpolished” drafts and short stories, hoping to find a community that appreciates the raw creative process. My primary motivation has never been purely financial—it is the desire for readers to lose themselves in the worlds I’ve built. Yet, I cannot ignore the financial reality: revenue would allow me to hire the professional editors and designers my work deserves.
Currently, I am struggling to find my creative spark. My goal of 3,000 words per week—tracked via Pacemaker—has become a source of guilt rather than motivation. Every time I fall behind the schedule, it deepens my exhaustion. I have poured my soul into six volumes of The Shadow Realm Chronicles, subjecting them to years of revision until every word gleamed. To meet that effort with soul-crushing silence is a heavy burden to carry. Some days, the temptation to retire my keyboard feels almost irresistible.
I am a teacher by day, but in my soul, I am an author. I am simply waiting for the world to hear my voice.
Today, an overwhelming and profound wave of melancholy has utterly washed over me, an oppressive heaviness in my spirit that I find myself utterly unable to pinpoint to a single event. It’s a feeling that wasn’t a companion when I first woke—the morning offered a brief, fragile peace—but it has crept in stealthily, intensifying hour by hour, settling into a deep, pervasive gloom. I have been meticulous in adhering to my self-care regimen, ensuring I took my necessary medication precisely on schedule, as a fortress against such emotional sieges. Yet, despite this discipline, my entire emotional landscape feels profoundly unbalanced, listing dangerously under an invisible, unbearable weight.
I suspect, with a certainty that settles like a cold, hard stone deep in the pit of my gut, that this debilitating feeling is intimately and agonizingly tied to the agonizing, unyielding reality of my life’s work: my books. For ten long, solitary years, I have poured the very essence of my soul, my passion, my time, and my sanity into the writing craft. I hold an unwavering, deep-seated conviction in the quality of these narratives; I genuinely believe the stories I’ve woven are good, the characters I’ve breathed life into are complex and utterly compelling, and the worlds I have spent years mapping are fully realized, rich, and immersive. I have subjected them to a relentless process of revision, editing, and polishing, going through countless drafts—so many that the files are a testament to tireless dedication—until every single word, phrase, and paragraph gleams with the light of its final, best form. And yet, the result is the same soul-crushing, deafening silence: the sales figures remain utterly stagnant, a flatline of disappointment, and despite every pitch at conferences, every networking attempt, every perfectly crafted query letter I send into the void, I cannot secure a literary agent to champion my work. The industry feels less like a gate and more like an insurmountable, monolithic barrier of granite.
In a desperate bid to break this cycle of obscurity, I tried a new, modern approach just yesterday. I dedicated hours to conceptualizing, filming, editing, and promoting two separate, high-effort videos on TikTok. The immediate, initial response was encouraging; the videos accumulated a respectable number of views—a decent, tangible sign of engagement, even—but that fleeting digital attention never, not once, translated into a single, concrete book sale. My deepest, most fervent dream is not merely to write in my spare moments, but to be a full-time, self-sustaining author. I yearn, with a fierce, almost painful intensity, to devote my entire life and every waking thought entirely to the craft: to weave grand, ambitious tales without the pressure of a day job, to harness my imagination without reserve, and, most profoundly, to guide readers not just to see the worlds I’ve painstakingly built, but to inspire them to fall utterly, hopelessly in love with those worlds. I want my creations to transcend the page and become real, resonant, unforgettable places for them, a sanctuary they return to.
Some days, the sheer, unrelenting weight of this struggle becomes too much for my spirit to bear, and the temptation to simply surrender to the overwhelming discouragement, to pack away my keyboards and retire my ambitions, is almost irresistible. Today, truly, is one of those agonizing, critical days where the desire to quit is a powerful, beckoning siren.
In these moments of profound doubt, I reflexively seek validation in the people I know and love. Friends and family have generously read my manuscripts, and they offer deeply kind and reassuring praise, assuring me over and over that the books are genuinely good, compelling works. But I am painfully, acutely aware that their judgment is inevitably clouded by their affection for me; they are not objective critics in the unforgiving literary marketplace. What I truly, desperately need is validation from the outside world—from agents who see commercial potential, from objective critics who recognize literary merit, and, most importantly, from complete strangers who are moved to buy the book, read it, and then feel compelled to enthusiastically tell others about the worlds I have built.
At this precise, debilitating moment, staring at the blank screen and at the evidence of a decade of intensive, solitary work that feels completely invisible, I am at a complete, agonizing loss. I honestly and truly do not know where to turn next or what practical, effective action to take to break through this impenetrable, maddening wall of obscurity and unread silence.
The sheer volume of my output only compounds the sense of despair: I have completed a six-book fantasy or science fiction series, a standalone science fiction novel, a deeply personal, heartbreaking book documenting my miscarriage, countless poems, and I am currently in the process of reworking and perfecting a children’s book. I am staring at this monumental body of work and feeling the crushing question: how much more is the universe asking me to do before I am deemed worthy of an audience?
Here is the first chapter of The Shadow Realm Chronicles: Maeve, which I hope will speak for itself.
Chapter 1 The Great War
Many years ago, darkness tore apart the worlds. They called it the Great War, for it was massive and involved all the realms of each world. Enemies on either side grew their armies for battle with heavy casualties. New allies formed out of this bloodshed while old ones crumbled.
The world of the Faye changed forever as their king descended into madness. His name was Julian. He once was a loving ruler, but those times were long gone. The pages written of him now are full of rage, blood, and hatred. Hatred for his children who grew to love others and revolt against him and his rule. Hatred for his wife, who fled with his children and hatred for all the realms that were not under his rule. Julian needed his children because they were powerful. Each one controlled one of the four elements: wind, water, earth, and fire. Even though his children hated what he had become, they remembered the good in him and were perhaps the only ones besides their mother who did.
Marius, the leader of the vampires and Jonathan, the ruler of The Shadow Realm, fought alongside Julian, but they did not trust him. Each of these three men was scheming against each other as they all wanted to come out the victor.
Jonathan had many plans and plots forming in his head, but they all revolved around Maeve. Maeve was a fairy, but she lived in a quiet world. The one world that was protected from the Great War. Jonathan didn’t care what Julian or Marius did as long as it didn’t interfere with his plan but interfere was what they did best. Jonathan had great plans for Maeve and her family, but he knew little of her connections to Julian’s family.
The Great War might have been over, but another one was looming in the distance, and it all began with a lonely mother named Maeve.
Chapter 2 The Lonely Mother
Maybe the stress of having a baby was getting to Hunter. He never had much attention from his own family, and when he met Maeve, she gave him so much love and attention. My life was better without Alex. He is stealing Maeve from me. Maybe he thought having a baby wouldn’t change things, but it did. Maeve was always taking care of Alex. Feeding him, bathing him, changing him, and burping him. When she wasn’t caring for him, she was telling Hunter the things Alexander did. I hate this. I lost my wife to a baby.
He lied to Maeve and told her he had to work on a case. Sometimes he said he was meeting colleagues, other times clients. It didn’t matter because he wasn’t meeting anyone.
Hunter went to a bar. He sat looking at the mirror across from him as he drank. There must be more. My life should be better than this.
That night Maeve was making dinner as normal waiting on Hunter. She sighed as she stirred the pot of soup. Where could he be? She always wondered where he was. She never believed his lies. Another meeting. He must think I’m stupid. Her heart sank as she thought of what he was doing. Maybe he found another woman. Could he be cheating on me? The thought killed Maeve. She bit the inside her lip to stop herself from crying. Where did I go wrong? Is it my fault?
Alex started crying. Maeve turned the stove off and removed the soup from the heat before tending to Alex. “Is someone hungry?” she asked, as she prepared a bottle.
She heard a sound coming from her front yard. It was as if the wind was carrying her name. She couldn’t turn away.
Maeve walked to the door and opened it as Alexander continued to cry. The wind carried her name through the trees, and it was getting closer and closer. Then it stopped. Maeve woke from this trance standing in her doorway. She wondered why she was standing there. She shook her head, feeling confused and bewildered.
Alexander’s cries continued to grow louder. Maeve realized he must have been crying for a while by then and wondered why she didn’t attend to him sooner. She closed the door and locked it. Then turned to Alex. “Shh, Mommy’s here.” She picked him up and rocked him for a moment before sitting on the couch to feed him.
Alex cooed in her arms as she fed him. Maeve couldn’t help but smiled as he yawned in her arms, but Maeve was far from happy.
“Oh, Alex, what did I do wrong?” She woke up every two hours to care for Alex. During the day, she tried to clean and cook. She went through life in a trance. Is this my life cleaning, cooking, and caring for Alex? Is this my life? Does Hunter still love me? Maeve cried as she held Alex. As much as she tried to fight the tears, she couldn’t. She knew she was losing Hunter. He was slipping away from her.
The voice came back again. I must be crazy. The voice was so soft and sweet. It beckoned to her to come.
“Maeve. Maeve. Come, my love,” the voice called to her.
Maeve picked up Alex and set him back in the bassinet. She then walked to the door and opened it. The night air hit her face, but it didn’t wake her from her trance. The voice was closer now, and it continued to come closer as it traveled through the air. The closer the voice got, the colder the air became.
A milky mist formed along the tree line. Maeve watched as the mist began to form what resembled a man. He moved toward her. Run, Maeve. Close the door, lock it. Scream, run, Maeve. But she didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she had the strange urge to please this man. The closer he got to her, the more she wanted to please him. A smile came across her face. He’ll make everything better. He will make me happy. I can make him happy. Why am I thinking about these things? Run, Maeve!
“Hello, Maeve,” he said, with a sinister smile.
Chapter 3 Marius
After a while, Maeve could speak. “How do you know me?”
Marius took her hands in his. “They wrote your name long ago, my dear. You will be a great power. One people will fear.”
Maeve flinched as he held her hands; they were freezing. She could see her breath but not his. Was he breathing? He smiled, and to Maeve, his smile was captivating. She smiled back.
“Come, Maeve. You are an especially important woman.”
Maeve didn’t think she was important, so the words made her proud. She wondered how she could be important, but it didn’t matter. She loved the attention and care he was giving her, but it was more than that. Maeve had no control. Alex cried, and she needed to care for him. Her heart knew what she needed to do, but her body didn’t move. Inside she was crying for her son, but there she was standing with this man. I need to get to Alex, but why can’t I move?
Her hands trembled in his. “Please, my son.”
Marius smiled. “You won’t care for him much longer.”
He moved her hair away from her neck and kissed it. No! I love my son.
Maeve moaned as he kissed her. It had been so long since Hunter was affectionate to her. He never touched her anymore. She wanted to pull this man close. She couldn’t understand the connection she felt to him.
He whispered, “Shh, save your heart. There is another who longs for you.”
Maeve didn’t understand, but she woke from her trance. “Alex!” She knew she needed to turn and run from this man.
As Maeve turned, Marius grabbed her arms and pulled her towards him, causing bruising on her arms. This time he didn’t kiss her neck. Instead, he bit her. He sank his teeth into her neck and feasted on her blood.
Maeve screamed and tried to fight. As the pain of the bite wore off, her body filled with warmth. She moaned as her body ached for more. The pain was erotic and sensual. She didn’t understand how, but she craved more of it. He continued to drain her as she held onto him.
Marius laid her on the ground as he drained her. He stood over her and admired his work as he wiped her blood from his lips. Maeve laid on the ground, motionless. Her eyes were wide open as she stared off into the woods. Her skin was white and striking compared to her bright red hair.
He knelt next to her. “I will call upon you again to finish our business, my dear.” With that, he left her and walked into the woods.
Maeve could see and hear everything that was going on, but she couldn’t move. She watched as Marius turned into mist, and then the mist floated into the woods.
The 50-Clap Strategy: A Poet’s Blueprint for Community and Growth on Medium As an indie writer and poet, success on Medium isn’t just about crafting beautiful verse; it’s about mastering the art of the ecosystem. For creators working outside of major publications, engagement is the lifeblood, and the 50-clap strategy, combined with genuine community reading, is a powerful tool to foster that engagement.
Here is why adopting the maximum-clap, community-first approach is beneficial for your presence on the platform.
Maximizing Emotional and Algorithmic Support The act of giving 50 claps is more than just a digital pat on the back—it’s a potent signal that provides both emotional and algorithmic support to your fellow writers.
The Psychological Boost: For any writer, especially one starting out, seeing a full 50 claps is a massive dopamine hit. It signals profound appreciation and validates the time and effort invested in their work. This genuine encouragement builds goodwill and is often reciprocated, not out of obligation, but out of a shared understanding of the need for support.
The Visibility Factor: While Medium’s partner program earnings are primarily tied to member reading time, claps still play a role in story distribution and visibility. A high clap count suggests a story is engaging and highly appreciated, encouraging the algorithm to potentially show it to more readers and followers. You help your peers get seen, and they, in turn, help you.
The Power of Reciprocal Community Building Your commitment to reading and fully engaging with your followers’ work transforms a passive follower count into an active community.
Building Genuine Connections: By making it a point to read more of your followers’ articles and poems, you move beyond the superficial “follow-for-follow” game. When you read their work, clap 50 times, and leave a thoughtful comment, you initiate a real, memorable connection. These connections are the foundation of a loyal readership.
Encouraging Reciprocity: People are far more likely to invest their time (and 50 claps) in your work when they see that you are actively invested in theirs. This isn’t artificial engagement; it’s a culture of generosity where you are leading by example, showing that you value the content on the platform. The goal is to rise by lifting others—their growth contributes to the overall health and vibrancy of the poetry community on Medium, which ultimately benefits you.
Training the Algorithm and Defining Your Niche The articles you read and clap for heavily influence the content that Medium’s algorithm shows you, which is an opportunity for targeted growth.
Refining Your Feed: By focusing your reading and 50-clapping on the work of fellow poets and indie writers, you signal to Medium exactly what kind of content you value. This refines your homepage feed, making it a valuable source of relevant, inspiring, and high-quality content within your niche.
Content Discovery: When you engage deeply with niche content, you become more visible to the readers who follow those same writers and tags. Your active presence in the comments and clap lists of other poets puts your name and work directly in front of your target audience—people who are already proven to read and support poetry on Medium.
By consistently giving 50 claps to content you genuinely enjoy and dedicating time to read your followers’ work, you are actively participating in the mutual growth of the indie writing community. This is the most authentic, sustainable strategy for a poet to gain visibility and build a loyal audience on Medium.
In the past, I was an active member of a highly valuable Facebook group dedicated to the craft of writing. This community was specifically designed to support and encourage fellow writers, with a strong emphasis on maximizing our engagement on published stories. Our primary strategy involved a reciprocal exchange—a “clap for clap” system—where we would share our work and, in turn, give the maximum 50 claps to the stories shared by others.
This practice, while certainly effective at boosting visibility and improving our metrics, transcended simple number-crunching. It cultivated a much deeper connection among its participants. The system fundamentally built a supportive community, transforming a collection of solitary writers into a collaborative network. It fostered significant professional and creative growth by encouraging us to consistently produce and share new content. Most importantly, it provided the essential mutual support that independent (“indie”) writers critically need to navigate the often isolating and challenging landscape of online publishing, creating an environment of positive reinforcement and shared success.
