Anthea Sharp: The Writer’s Journey

Anthea Sharp: The Writer’s Journey

On March 29th, 2015, USA Today bestselling author, Anthea Sharp slipped on her e-gloves and helmet, powered up her Full-D sim, then opened a portal to a little piece of her fantasy realm, Feyland, residing at Medici University. For an hour she talked of her experiences in publishing, the writing process, as well as taking questions from the audience.

It was a magical event. Of course.

It was also inspiring, when you look at the hero’s journey of her writing career from aspiring writer to independent-published, successful author.

Anthea’s journey began by taking the path so many aspiring writer used to take. She wrote well enough to get an agent and get in the door of one the traditional publishing houses.  It wasn’t unusual, and still isn’t today, for large publishing houses to ignore their genre writers, spending their marketing dollars on their big-name authors, the ones who are sure bets to sell lots of books. Also, traditional publishing is a slow process.

While waiting to hear back from her publisher, Anthea picked up her pen – some might say her sword – and bravely struck out on the path to the then mystifying realm of indy-publishing.

And the young-adult book series Feyland was born. Feyland is a scifi, gaming, faery fantasy mashup. It’s a combination of genres that might make you raise a questioning eyebrow, certainly one that would likely put off an old-school publishing house. But Feyland is successful. And Anthea is successful.

Anthea Sharp has been ranked in the Top 100 Fantasy/SF authors list at Amazon. Her books are consistently rated four stars or higher by Amazon readers, and Feyland: The Bright Court is current ranked number 66 in its genre category. Feyland: The Dark Realm, the first book of the Feyland is available for free and it is ranked number 25 in its genre.

In fiction, the hero’s journey is often over after vanquishing some powerful foe, a dragon or a dark fairy queen, perhaps. The real life hero’s journey we’re all on rarely confronts us with a single powerful foe blocking our way to success: We fight our dragons every day.

Anthea came to Medici University and shared with us some of the lessons of her journey. She told us of her experiences – gaming, writing, and publishing. She shared her knowledge and insights, gave us advice, and showed us how we might follow her path. She shared her magic with us.

Thank you, Anthea.

 

---

Anthea Sharp’s Feyland series is available on Amazon and iTunes. She also writes romance novels under the pen name Anthea Lawson. Visit her websites for more details: Anthea Sharp and Anthea Lawson.