I can’t believe it, I actually have my very own book! I’ve spent a good few months writing, editing and designing it, and it is finally here!

I AM… is a collection of three short stories, each one concerning a different mental health issue – these being depression, anxiety and OCD. The stories follow the protagonists on their mental health journeys and the reader can see how the characters choose to deal with their conditions.

Just take a look at that cover!

My cover photo was taken and edited by the wonderful Jessica Erin Dent and I’m so happy with how it’s turned out! I’m so lucky to have such talented friends!

This book was written as and assignment for my university course, and in doing so I have accomplished one of my most prominent childhood dreams. If you would like to buy a copy of the book, you will find it on Amazon by typing in the title and my name, or by following the link to it below!

I hope that if you choose to read it you enjoy it, and why not leave a review on either my Facebook page or on Amazon itself? You will find a link to my Facebook page on the ‘contact’ page.

I hope you enjoy I AM…!

Rhian xx

I’ve done it, I’ve written my first draft!

Wow, it was tough. I spent a long time researching different mental health issues before deciding on the three that I would write about. Each mental health issue has its own story, meaning that rather than writing a novel for my first ever published works, I have decided on a collection of short stories. In an ideal world, I would have written five stories, however time was against me and three was a much more doable target!

The issues that I have written about are depression, anxiety and OCD. I’ve managed to write about the mental health issues both from research and from my own experiences, which was slightly painful at the time, but also therapeutic now that they have been finished – to some degree.

It feels amazing to have finished the first draft, I thought i was never going to get there! When you’re writing, everything seems to take an age to get to, but now that it’s done, I’m feeling very proud of how much i have written in such a short space of time.

I’m now onto the editing process, and I’m really looking forward to reading through my work and making it up to the standard that I aspire to have as an author. Author… it feels strange to be calling myself that! But I suppose it is true, I will be an author once this is finished! Crazy!

I best get on with my editing now, or I will run out of time among all my other university assignments that I’ve got to do! I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m back on here writing about my progress again!

Rhian xx

Here I am, at the start of my writing journey! I can’ believe that I’m being given the opportunity to write a book!

My Creative Writing course at De Montfort University has given us an assignment in which we are to publish our own work – pretty exciting stuff! rather than treating it as an assignment, I am choosing to really throw myself into my work and create something that I’m actually proud of, proud enough to publish it!

I’ve wanted to write my own book since I was a small child, and was constantly writing little stories and giving them to my teachers at primary school. I just loved the creativity of it all. I loved the feeling of delving into my imagination and surprising myself with what I produced. Generally, these stories were about what i was interested in at the time, which meant fairies. Lots and lots of fairies. I was convinced that one day I would see one in my garden or hanging about on my windowsill, and I loved thinking about the adventures that my new fairy friend and I would embark on!

As I’ve grown older, my taste in books has changed slightly, and I am now into reading chick-lit and rom-com books – the feel-good kind, that could make you laugh or cry as you follow the characters through their narratives. But when I was going through my plans for my own book, I decided that chick-lit and rom-com wasn’t the route I wanted to go down. I wanted to do something a bit different. i wanted to push myself. I looked into important topics at the minute and saw that mental health was seriously lacking in the fiction world. Seeing as I, and many other people that I know have suffered with various mental health problems at some points in their lives, I knew that this as what I had to write about. These people need representing in the fictional world, and I hope to do them justice.

I’ve come up with my title, I AM…, and now I’m getting ready to write. I will be documenting my progress on here, so I hope that you’ll follow along with me as I fulfil my childhood dream of publishing my very own book!

Rhian xx