The Book That Called Me Back

THE BOOK THAT CALLED ME BACK

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Some people are born writers. Others become writers.

Writing has been part of me since I was three years old. Apparently, that year I dictated an entire play to my older sister about a mouse who defeated a cat.

Flash forward to me age ten, when I typed my first novella on one of those old Macintosh computers with a floppy drive. It was a deeply emotional tale, fraught with disaster, preteen angst, and sprinkles of deception.

From then on, writing became my beacon, a place where I could unleash all my woes, which were plentiful given my upbringing.

In my teens, I entered poetry and essays in contests. Some won awards. One was even published in my local newspaper. Others simply helped build the foundation of the writer I would become.

But it wasn’t until my thirties that writing became an integral part of my life. I completed six novels, all trunked now. I compiled my poetry and short stories on Booksie, where my work has since received nearly 200,000 reads. I won two short-story contests, placing first in one and second in another, and even had a story published in an anthology.

One of those award-winning stories later became the inspiration for my seventh novel.

I was ecstatic. I decided to hire an editor to help take my seventh manuscript to the next level.

Boy, was I in for a shock.

The story needed a major overhaul. But COVID-19 had just begun, I needed to homeschool my first grader, and I was too overwhelmed to even contemplate a ground-up rewrite.

So I did the most reasonable thing: I stopped writing for five years.

Those were wonderful years, filled with family memories, vacations, and moments I will always treasure. But in the back of my mind, my book kept calling.

Then, on July 1, 2025, I realized something.

If I truly wanted to achieve my dream of becoming a published author, it was now or never.

So I returned to the manuscript and began the difficult work of rebuilding it from the ground up. In three intense weeks, I wrote the bones of the new novel.

Nineteen revision passes and another major overhaul later, that story became my adult cyberpunk fantasy novel, SCARella—The Machete Marauderess.

Now, after a year of rewriting and revising, my manuscript is the book I hoped it would become. It’s finally ready to enter the querying trenches in late fall 2026.

For a long time, I thought stepping away from writing meant I had somehow stopped being a writer. But the stories never left me.

Whatever stage of the process you are in,

drafting, revising, resting, returning, or starting over,

you are still a writer.

Own that. I know I have. No one can delete what I’ve created. 🦋🔥

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Connect with me on:

Bluesky, X, Booksie, Facebook& Instagram

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© 2026 Joy Shaw. All rights reserved. Stories forged in fire.