We were lucky to catch up with C.k. Beggan recently and have shared our conversation below.

C.K., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

The thing I wish I had done sooner was become an indie author. Part of the stumbling block was that I didn’t really understand what independent publishing was.

Indies are a little different from self-publishers. When you’re an indie, you are your own publisher; many authors form their own LLC. You bear all the burdens of putting books out onto the market, but you are also in control of your own fate.

For almost two decades, I lived in the submission trenches, both in the short story market (I started out as a literary short fiction writer) and querying agents with novels (some fantasy, some not). I had a handful of early successes in the short story market, with kind publications that nominated my stories for awards, including the Pushcart Prize. Also, I sometimes got very encouraging rejection letters, as funny as that sounds! It felt like I was going in the right direction.

Along the way, I started feeling like fantasy was the right path for me. It flowed differently for me when I sat down to write. The last mansucript I submitted to agents resulted in a very complimentary rejection letter that basically graded the sample I submitted, and that it was close to where it needed to be for an agent to take on. But they also let me know that to move forward, they recommended I work with a line editor.

That was indeed a weakness of mine, but I didn’t have anywhere near budget enough to hire an editor of any kind. Around that same time, I bought an ebook I absolutely adored, Sunbolt, by Intisar Khanani. When I reached the end, I was surprised to find out this was an indie book.

I could see no differences between this indie book and one published by a traditional publishing house, and it’s still one of my favorite reads. It really opened my mind to the possibilities of indie publishing. If I needed to hire an editor anyway, why not do it as an indie?

This isn’t quite a happily ever after at this point, though, because I still had virtually no budget to work with, and even less knowledge! I started out completely oblivious to the indie book market and how to reach readers, as much as I tried to read up on the subject. Everything was very different from traditional publishing! For example, where I was once told to beware of tropes, tropes became a plus. Now that I understand them better, I have my favorites and I even use them to find books as a reader.

Learning (and processing) all the new information about indie publishing best practices meant learning to market my own books in a different way than I ever had, understanding distributors and their requirements, and learning to format my books and design graphics, among other skills. If I had started sooner, I sometimes wonder where I’d be now, and for good reason.

You can’t shortcut this process. Knowing where to best use the funds you have for publishing is a skill of its own, and that comes from experience. I continue to publish with a small budget, but far more effectively, and that took almost five years to figure out. Likewise, learning to make eye-catching graphics for social media, and even to design my own covers, probably took hundreds of hours of practice and countless missteps. I could say the same with every aspect of indie publishing, just like I would for the craft of writing itself.

If only my younger self had known to take the leap to indie publishing sooner! Not only that, but to be patient with all the learning and practice I had to do.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a fantasy author who writes both novels and shorters works, usually with romance involved, and I try to include some aspect of life with disabling chronic illnesses in everything, whether directly or through allegory. Frequent themes are the isolation, grief and feelings of being misunderstood that come with being disabled (and in my case, waiting decades for my diagnoses).

My most popular series, a YA portal fantasy series called Tara’s Necklace, has dual narrators. One is considered to have a fragile body, prone to illness and injury, The other has been written off for the opposite reason, having a ghost-like body that has seemingly little influence on the physical world. Both experience real-world problems, but in fantastical settings.

I wouldn’t say I set out to write this way, but including chronic illness and disability in my stories came naturally. I’ve lived with chronic illness since childhood, so it’s the lens I view the world through. But it wasn’t until I re-read an older manuscript (a shorter work that became Girl of Shadow and Glass, the first book in that YA series) that I noticed how much of my own experience was in it! That was when I realized I had something to say beyond telling a fantasy story that was meaninful for its own sake.

Since then, I’ve bounced around other subgenres while continuing to work on the Tara’s Necklace series. I’ve written about the effects of pollution on a character with chronic respiratory illness in a sexy vampire fantasy romance, a healer who finds her powers in a moment of profound grief, a gorgeous fae lord who walks with a cane due to chronic pain, and a girl with POTS in a dystopian world where she has no access to treatments, but still has extremely valuable skills to her society that she just wants a chance to show. (That last story, To Thaw a Phoneix Heart, is about to publish exclusively in a limited edition charity anthology for communities hit by Hurricane Helene, Of Storms and Stardust.)

Once, I took far too long to realize my chronically ill main character needed a love interest, because disabled women are not often love interests in popular media. Now, I try to include chronic illness in almost every romantic couple I write.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’m in the middle of an ongoing story about author burnout, but this one is my life and not words on a page! I got into this situation because I was trying to indie publish “like everyone else” and build my career quickly. But I am disabled, and my energy is at a premium. The common methods just aren’t for me. I had to learn that the hard way, apparently!

Even simple things like a preorder are incredibly loaded. In fact, that’s how I got burned out in the first place. Yet they’re an extremely common practice. Now I try to work as far ahead as possible and avoid deadline scramble, often by not creating deadlines in the first place.

At some point, I may not be able to continue writing and publishing due to my health. Brain fog from fibromyalgia and POTS is already a huge obstacle that’s gotten worse in recent years. So I’m working to make the process as sustainable as possible, to make my career as long as possible.

I recently had to take a long break from publishing, and it proved incredibly difficult to come back from. The next break could be indefinite. Today, for now, I can write. And even if I have to quit at some point…I’ll revisit and see if a comeback is possible!

That’s where resilience comes in: It’s not just making it through burnout and publishing again, but continuing to find solutions that fit you, your health, and your individual situation, and leaving what you expected behind. I often refer to myself as “semi-retired” now, which is useful for reminding myself not to overdo it, and that I’m not supposed to be on anybody’s schedule but my own.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Including chronically ill, disabled characters, especially in romantic fantasy, is a huge part of my mission.

The other part is just being here and continuing to publish. It’s proving a point in its own way. I can’t go get another job that will significantly support my writing expenses because my body doesn’t allow that, I may never be able to. So I’m forging a path unique to my needs and budget as a disabled person, and maybe, at some point, an author in a similar situation will come along and have not just me as an example, but plenty of examples.

Not giving up until I have to is absolutely a driving force for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ckbeggan.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ckbeggan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ckbeggan
• Other: Amazon Author Profile: https://www.amazon.com/stores/C.K.-Beggan/author/B082H6JBG3

  Goodreads Author Profile: https://www.goodreads.com/ckbeggan

  BookBub Author Profile: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/c-k-beggan

  Author Shop: https://shop.ckbeggan.com/

Image Credits

Amira Naval