Cheers to Ten Years of Publishing

Hello, reader! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? My last post, I promised that I would be back in the summertime. While that timeline is still largely true, there have been some certain changes around here in the last week or so that have me stepping things up and pushing my plans into high gear. It’s a little sooner than expected, but after ruminating on it for a little while, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

One of the reasons that I was a little bit sad about having to wait until at least the summertime to come back to all things indie pub was that I was going to miss my ten-year anniversary this month!

Yep, it’s true. I set out on this journey ten years ago. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, a lot of missteps … but there has also been a lot of good times and, I hope, some good stories too.

So, as much as some of the recent changes in my life really suck, I’m really happy to be able to celebrate ten years as an indie author with you now!

Let’s take a walk down memory lane together …

March 2016: Cherry Pickett Launches on WattPad and Blogger

Looking back, I have learned a lot in ten years. When I first launched, I put my website on Blogger, which was Google’s platform for writing blogs. Harkening to my fanfic author roots, I went with a serial format: I shared new chapters of a story every week, both on the website itself and on Wattpad.

I might have simply been ahead of the curve with serial fiction: later, Amazon launched Vella, and Radish did well for some authors. More recently, we’ve seen more serial reading platforms, like Ream. Sadly, though, serials still haven’t caught on among Western audiences: Amazon wound down Vella, and Radish ended their program later that same year. Ream still seems to be going strong, although there’s been controversy about its inclusion of AI.

I soon ran into issues with the model I’d adopted. One, keeping up with serialization is difficult, especially when you have other responsibilities (and those other responsibilities are paying the bills). It didn’t take long before I was struggling to keep up with the schedule I’d set for sharing content, missing updates, delaying them, and so on and so forth. It was … exactly like your fav fanfic author.

There were also issues around visibility and monetization. I needed my day job (and my side hustle, and my other side hustle) to pay my bills, because that website serial sure as heck was not. I didn’t truly understand SEO at the time, and I was building a social media following from scratch, which was difficult then (and, I think, maybe even more difficult to do now).

As a final nail in the coffin: I was writing m/m hockey omegaverse. In 2016.

That phrase would make me a bajillion dollars in 2026, but it definitely wasn’t doing jack shit in 2016.

The First Novels Appear

In 2017, I was still writing sports romances with an omegaverse twist, but I’d shifted my focus from hockey to swimming. (I’ll give you three guesses as to why.) I published four books, two of them on swimming, one on hockey, and one hockey novella. Three of four of them are still available, but they get very little attention (and rightfully so). I was still building how my own editorial process works at the time.

I’d call this phase experimental. I was learning, but nothing was really working.

A Shift to High Fantasy

In 2018, I made plans to release A Stranger Sort of Fairy Tale, which was totally different from what I’d been doing. I was shifting more and more away from the sports romances to my true loves: sci-fi and fantasy.

Unfortunately, A Stranger Sort of Fairy Tale ran into huge developmental issues. I still remember the phone call with my editor: I’d been badgering her about her progress with the book, and she kept dodging me. Finally, I cornered her and she spilled: “I cannot get past how this character is acting,” she said.

“That’s a huge problem in the story structure,” I said.

I forget how long we spent on the phone, but we hashed out a new outline for the story, one that made the book that much stronger.
That meant I needed to go back to the drawing board, melt the book down, and try again. So I did, and I pushed the release date to 2019. The book was my only publication of 2019.

Again, I made missteps, and, as much as I love Fairy Tale, it’s never received much attention. I bungled the marketing and the release; the cover isn’t much to look at; and I never put it into KU, instead chasing wide release.

The Zodiac Series Launches Cherry Pickett to Space

In summer 2019, I had a discussion with a friend and fellow author, lamenting how difficult it was to find success as an indie author. She advised me to write what I wanted to.

So I did.

The result as a shift to sci-fi romance with the Flirting with the Zodiac series. These were originally supposed to be a series focused very tightly on a bunch of snake shifters. I’ve said before that the third book in the series, Main Squeeze, was the first one written. Book 4, Riding the Bull, was actually the second book written, and you can tell because they feature the same alien species. From there, however, I pivoted to the idea of a series with shifters for each of the Western zodiac (including the “unofficial” sign of Ophiuchus).

While I was hoping to keep each of the books to around 50,000 words—and they originally started off trope-heavy and even borderline comical—the series soon took on a different depth. Each book is set against the backdrop of interplanetary colonialism and warfare, which has, as the series has progressed, become more and more of a focal point for the series. The most recent release for this series was in 2022—almost four years ago now—bringing us to Book 6 out of a planned 13, so not quite halfway. I’m hoping to change that soon, with new books now in the works, but I will admit that I’ve struggled with more recent manuscripts (I’ll liken my struggles to George R R Martin and his ongoing delays with the next book in the Fire and Ice series, but without the fame or fortune or very patient publisher).

Omega on Top, Rare Flower, and Evan and the Alpha

In 2021, I published Boardroom Omega, which went from zero draft in January to fully published book in October. That was a feat, and I remember wondering if I’d written the perfect book for a while. (It’s not, but I do so love it, and the editing process was so, so smooth.)

Glitterati Omega followed, which forms the Omega on Top series. I do plan to add more titles to this series, but as each is relatively self-contained, I don’t feel much pressure to get more books out.

Rare Flower gave me a bit of a struggle, especially as I was still working full-time, and, unfortunately, people around me kept coming down with COVID. The book was delayed a couple of times before it finally hit shelves in the fall of 2022.

My other big hit was Evan and the Alpha, which still performs pretty well. The book gives in to almost all the tropes around “planetary romance”: it’s dual POV, first-person narration, and it’s got crocodile aliens with a/b/o dynamics. What’s not to love?

More Recent Books and Hiatuses

In 2023, I published Saved by the Selkie, which … did not do well. Nor did the sequel, published in 2024: Shipwrecked with the Selkie. I like both of these books well enough, and I invested a bit in the covers, but I guess my marketing fell a bit flat. Or perhaps I missed the market again: I’m seeing selkies all over the place now, but y’all weren’t ready for them two or three years ago. Or something.

That doesn’t matter: the books are still there, if anyone ever feels like checking them out.

There is a planned third book, which will round out the trilogy, but those plans are currently on hiatus.

In fact, I’ve been on hiatus for almost two years now. In 2024, I had a baby, and I wrestled with some fairly severe PPD, stemming in part from an emergency C-section and other health issues. To compound everything, my father died unexpectedly less than four months later. I still published Shipwrecked, but I put the rest of my plans on hold.

Late in 2024, Baby and I found our feet and our rhythm, and I was able to use my time to write a little bit more. In early 2025, however, I had to go back to work. I landed a pretty sweet gig, which I initially held for six months on contract. I decided at that point I would delay publishing anything until the contract ended in the fall.

More Upheaval in 2025

In June, my grandfather passed away, less than a year after my father. I decided to put everything on hiatus—including my social media and marketing activities.

My contract was renewed for another six months, though, and I fell into a sort of dream situation, where I was able to work a full-time job, get paid regularly, pay all my bills, and still have time for family and writing. I wrote reams.

Unfortunately, I had to wake up from that dream a little earlier than I wanted to. Changes at the organization I was with made it so that they didn’t need me to fulfill the last little bit of my contract. It was always ending, but this end was very abrupt compared to the way I had envisioned it: a gradual winding down over the last couple of weeks of the contract, and a building up of my freelance business alongside that, so I could hit the ground running when the contract ended.

I also planned to return to my indie publishing activities once the contract ended and, well, here I am! The contract has ended, and I am planning to return. Since the end of the contract was abrupt, though, I need a bit of time to get my feet back under me, to sort out my plan going forward, and to get my ducks in a row, so to speak.

The Future

I have a lot of stuff planned: I have eight manuscripts in the editorial stage, and my current outlook allows me to keep up with my writing schedule to some degree, so I’m hoping that will mean more manuscripts are soon ready to enter that editorial stage.
I have some covers ready, as well as covers in the works, and I’ve got a lot of material built up for marketing. Of course, I have to iron out schedules and such, put the rubber to the road so to speak, but I’m feeling very optimistic about what’s coming down the pipeline in the next few months.

So, here’s to ten years of writing, of publishing, of learning. Here’s to eighteen published books—and more to come.
Here’s to the last ten years—and to the next ten years. Thank you for joining me on this rollercoaster, and I hope you’ll stick around!