So, last month I mentioned coming to an "important" decision.

It should be no secret that I've challenged the idea of picking a genre and sticking with it. I even went so far as to build a brand - GenreGamutBooks - based on this philosophy. "As an author, it has always been my intention to span the gamut of genres - be it Dystopian, Western, Fantasy, Thriller, etc. - available to an audience," I state on the Books page of this site.

Thank you to those who let me know you read and enjoy these monthly posts. I didn't intend to cast aspersions on anyone. In fact, it turns out, my perspective couldn't have been more skewed.

A day doesn't go by that I consider not writing anymore. The notion usually passes quickly, but sometimes it lingers throughout an entire day. I don't mean give it up, exactly, but lowering its priority even more than I have now.

I've come to realize an interesting phenomenon - a dilemma - about my writing.

Composing less "literary" lines - like these newsletters or the blogs I used to post - is much easier, comparatively effortless, than when I write a novel. I tend to throw these thoughts together in the course of a weekend, just before posting them in my newsletter and then here.

Now that those pesky holidays are out of the way, I can get to it!

But what, exactly, is it?

I must admit I've been in a bit of limbo the past couple months, trading my time when I should be writing or practicing guitar for doing crossword puzzles. Or napping.

I've tried all kinds of techniques to facilitate and ease the writing process. From well-organized three-ring binders (quite awkward to carry around) to pocket-size notebooks (I constantly lost pens). Currently, I'm trying what I learned from Hugo Award Winner Connie Willis - composing early drafts with a pen (still misplacing) and yellow legal pad.

In The World According to Garp, T.S. Garp - writer, and bastard son of feminist Jenny Fields - in order to provide his loved ones a safe life in an unsafe world, intentionally writes a novel, "The World According to Bensenhaver," that is so vulgar and upsetting that it would surely be a bestseller. It would make him rich enough to protect his family, and separate himself from a perverse, degrading society.

I started out September with an air of bliss, floating contently upon my decision to stop self-publishing and just write.

Then I received proofs for Of Gilded Flesh from IngramSpark that needed my approval before going to print. But I couldn't approve them. Nope. Something was wrong.

Of Gilded Flesh will be the last book I self-publish. Not because I found an agent who believes in me or a publishing house that finds my work worthy of investment. No, to put it simply, I hate self-publishing.