How #Twilight Changed My Life and Why I'm Proud To Be A #Twihard (Part IV)

Last week's post ended with me telling you that reading Twilight pulled me out of the depressive state I'd found myself in at the end of 2009. How I wanted to drag out the process of reading the Twilight Saga to hang on to the amazing feeling I got from it. 

By the time summer 2010 came around, I was done with the last book in the series, Breaking Dawn. I ordered a copy of The Host, because I had a feeling that if anyone could convert me to sci-fi and aliens, it would be the author that wrote the Twilight Saga. And I was right. I loved it. It even made me cry a little. Below is the Stephenie Meyer portion of my bookshelf. Waiting for The Chemist to come out in paperback to add to the collection!

Inspiration and Visions

I still felt more positive about life and myself and that thing inside me that I thought had changed? I realised it was the need to write again—not just want, but actual need to write. I felt like I could.

All I needed was an idea.

And that idea came in the form of Jamie (the male protagonist of my contemporary romance novel, Soulmates Saga #1. I woke up on the morning of August 1, 2010, a few days after my 26th birthday, with Jamie in my head. He'd just finished performing a gig in a dimly lit, smoky bar and he looked very moody, reluctant. I could see him so clearly—his hair, his eyes, his demeanour. As though he was a very good friend, I just knew him—his pain, his apathy, his past, his present. What I didn’t know was his future. But I wanted to find out.  

I spent the rest of the day thinking about Jamie’s life, his family, and music, formulated a vague plan in my head for the plot and started writing. Though I hadn’t written anything for years, the narrative flowed so naturally and instinctively from the very beginning. I had no idea whether it was going to be a short story or a novel, all I knew was that I was writing it because I felt like I just had to. Jamie was simply too intriguing to ignore.

The female character Mukti, a young research analyst in London, was supposed to be the opposite of Jamie, but she presented herself differently as I started to see the world from her perspective. She ended up being a bigger mystery than Jamie, revealing her secrets slowly and often changing the direction of the story from where I thought it was heading. That process was very exciting, though. 

Having spent every free evening and weekend writing as much as I could, I completed the first rough draft by the end of the year, and started the laborious process of editing in 2011.  I hadn’t planned for it to be the novel it became, nor had I any plans to try and publish it. I'd only written it because I needed to, because I couldn’t get Jamie and Mukti out of my head, couldn’t stop their story from playing in my mind. I edited it because I'm a perfectionist and knew that it would only improve if I went over it again. When I mentioned it to a friend, of course I was persuaded to let her read it. She said she loved it and encouraged me to try and publish it.


I'm convinced that the vision of Jamie wouldn't have come to me, that acute need to write again wouldn't have manifested, if I hadn't read Twilight. At any rate, I would have remained in that depressed state if Twilight hadn't cheered me up.

I self-published that book as an e-book in summer 2012, which started my indie author journey. I owe a lot to Twilight, if not for inspiring me to write again, to read books regularly again, then definitely for pulling me out of that depressive slump I'd found myself in.

And that's how Twilight changed my life and why I'm proud to be a Twihard.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for reading this post. My books are available at:

Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and Amazon. You can find the >>Soulmates Saga here<<

My new book, Heir to the Throne (the first book in a new epic royalty fantasy trilogy), is out now, as is the sequel. More details here.