We were lucky to catch up with Ava Lynn Wood recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ava Lynn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

For years, I worked on my first manuscript, writing and rewriting scenes, pushing for that perfect product. You see, I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my own work and no matter how much I edit or re-edit a story, it’s never truly perfect in my eyes, but as some point you have to take a breath and just let go. After eight years of working on my first story, I struggled with what to do. I agonized over whether I was ready to publish and if I had the patience to wait for an agent and then a publisher to accept my work. I went back and forth, trying to figure out the best approach to publishing my book, but it took a chance meeting with a group of independently published authors to change my life and the way I saw the publishing industry.
Back then, being indie published was almost completely unheard of. Authors were just beginning to take the risk of sending their own manuscripts out into the world without the aid of a publisher to do so. Indie authors were under a very big microscope as many tried to prove themselves as relevant authors. Could someone indie published be as successful, as talented as an author who was traditionally published? The authors I met proved that being an indie author didn’t take away from their success or talent. In fact, one of those women is now one of the biggest authors in the community today.
Thanks to that meeting, I decided to take the leap, to risk my passion in the indie author community. It isn’t without it’s trials, but it’s been the absolute best choice of my life. It’s introduced me to a world of authors, industry professionals and readers that I might not have otherwise known.
In life there are many risks, but you have to be willing to take the leap, to endure the hardships and press on to reach your goal.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m an independently published author with nine years in this incredible community. I have published more than twenty books in that time under two pen names: Ava Wood for my young adult novels and Ava Lynn Wood for my spicier, adult projects. I grew up as an only child in a very remote area which gave me plenty of time to be creative. I would spend hours creating stories in my mind, forging paths for these fictional characters to fill my loneliness. I would weave emotion and trials and challenges through their stories that evoked my own range of emotions. It was this creativity that sparked a desire to put pen to paper and bring those characters to life.
While I have been through a host of characters since my start in 2013, my latest undertaking is the Limelight series, a set of rock star romance novels. Each of these musicians has their own set of humanizing problems and their stories will take you on a rollercoaster of emotions.
In fact, all of my books focus on the deeply human aspects of life, pulling at your emotions and taking you on an unexpected journey. My readers tend to love to hate me. They fall in love with my characters, root for them and sometimes even shed a few tears as these characters face their own list of trials and tribulations. All of my books are deeply rooted in connections between people; they focus on the good and bad that sums up the whole of their persona.
I take great joy in knowing the connection my readers have with each of my characters, who have become like friends in my own mind. They take on their own lives and become a part of me as I spill their stories onto the page. And my readers mean the world to me. Knowing that they felt the connection I created, that they felt for these characters brings me great joy! I love hearing how the stories effected them and how they can’t wait for the next novel.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When I first started out, I did everything as wrong as one could possibly do it. I trusted the wrong people, I poured money into the wrong resources, I dumped so much energy into things that weren’t profitable or even gratifying. It took a meeting with a fellow author to realize that I had journeyed down the wrong path and needed to take a hard left onto the correct and much easier path.
As an independent author, it’s easy to decide that you’re going to do things how YOU want to do them. You can make your own covers, do your own edits, put out a subpar book without doing the research required to get a finely polished product for readers.
But it’s much more rewarding to take the harder, smarter path. Invest in your book and in the skill of others. Find a trusted cover creator who can give you a well-branded product that represents not only your work, but your genre. After all, this is the first impression your reader will have of you as a professional. Take the time to seek out a relevant proofreader and editor. Allow them to scrape and mold your manuscript until it’s a polished monument that the world will journey to see. Find a formatter who can take a basic novel and make it shine like a brand new penny. Give your reader visual interest with each new page. Invest in the things that show the world you are as serious about your work as you are about them reading it.
Find the professionalism it takes to be a self-published author. Don’t just dive in with your eyes closed and hope for the best. Do the research. Understand the world you’re entering and enjoy the ride!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Being an author can be truly daunting. It takes time. It takes dedication. It takes a sense of pouring out your emotions and hoping they are received well. As someone full of self-doubt, I always worry what my readers’ response will be to each of my books. I’m on edge as I wait for those reviews to come rolling in. When those first reviews hit, however, and I see how the reader connected with the story, I’m on cloud nine. Knowing that I did that, I created emotions in them that they might have otherwise not felt at the time. I took them on a journey that they felt was rewarding, introducing them to worlds that I created solely for them to experience.
It’s thrilling to know that my readers fall in love with my characters, that they feel a sort of bond with them. A writer, while not completely lost without them, doesn’t feel quite whole without their readers, without the knowledge that they have touched someone else’s life while leaving a piece of their very soul on the page. Getting to know my readers and to know just how each of my books has effected their life is the greatest reward of all.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.avawood.net
• Instagram: instagram.com/btfl7
• Facebook: facebook.com/authorawood
• Twitter: twitter.com/btfl7

Image Credits
Woodward Photography Fins and Feathers Designs