authorchantalbellehumeur

History of writing projects (2009 to 2014)

It is important to note that for my fictional diaries "Veronica's Soap Opera Life," "Veronica's Attempt at Romance," and "Veronica's Happily Ever After" I purposely let errors to make it look more authentic.  Not many people liked that idea, but I don't like to follow rules.  I prefer to be original.  Some people have asked me if Veronica was me.  She was in part based on me, like many of my main characters, but she does not have the exact same personality as me.  The diaries are definitely not my own. I actually only ever owned a diary as a child, and I think people would fall asleep reading it.  My Veronica books are works of fiction, like the majority of my publications. 

I wrote my horror novel "Just.Another.Common.Killer" because I am obsessed with Halloween and love horror stories.  I became fascinated with Jack the Ripper during my trip to London England and decided to write a story based on him.  His reincarnation really.  I wanted to create the worst human monster ever and from the comments I received I think I succeeded. 

I polished up some of my old stories and came up with brand new ones for  "Thirteen-A compilation of Thirteen Short Stories."

The book "Sdrawkcab" was originally written for my son, who was 11 years old at the time.  The idea first came to me in a dream.  I then worked with my son on each chapter, reading him my drafts and listening to his input and told me what he would like to have in the story.  He was so happy when I gave him a copy of the published book, and carried it around with him. 

My fictional book "Hope" was written when I was really sick and desperate to make people understand what living with Colitis is like.  I have to admit that it is not my best work.  The article I wrote, "Living with Colitis," for The Suburban newspaper was much better.  In this article, I mentioned that my book earnings for Hope in 2013 would be donated to the CCFC (Crohn's and Colitis foundation of Canada) and am very grateful to those who made the donation possible.     

I started working for The Suburban Newspaper in 2012.  Word got around that I was an author and I was soon told that I could write short stories for the online magazine if I wanted, even though the Suburban had never published fiction in 50 years of existence.  I was very thrilled and wrote the family oriented short stories in my Emily series, which got published in The Suburban Online Magazine between April 2013 and April 2014.  All twelve stories were then compiled into a book called Emily-A Compilation of Short Stories because a lot of people wanted to have a hard copy rather than read the stories online.

While I was working on different short stories, I wrote the novella "Not Alone," which I independently published.  I keep a travel journal and many of my trips have inspired my stories.  I came up with this particular story after a trip to Moncton, New Brunswick.  I started working on the sequel ''Really Not Alone,'' after a reader asked if I was going to continue writing about Harmony and her family. 

Other publishers started asking me to submit my work but they had word limitations, which is something I was not used to.  I managed to write something within the criteria and my short story "Born to Sing" got approved for publication. My poem "Hiding in the Wilderness" got chosen for two magazines. I don't usually like to share my poetry because I find it very personal, but "Hiding in the Wilderness" reads more like a story and has absolutely nothing to do with my personal life.

The 2014 Aspiring to Inspire Woman Writers magazine, where my poem "Hiding in the Wilderness" and short story "Born to Sing" was published, made it to #1 on the Smashwords Female Authors Literary Collections.  I was pretty excited when I received the news that I technically became a bestselling author that morning. 

Author Amber M. Royce had the brilliant idea to compile motherhood stories together.  Although I usually prefer to write fiction, I was happy to write a memoir for "They Call me MamaBear."  I felt really exposed writing about myself rather than a character, but am happy I shared my true story.

I wrote a lot of poetry in the past but never shared it with anyone because it was too personal.   I poured my heart and soul into my compositions and that is part of the reason I didn't like to share my poems with anyone in the past.  I don't like to feel vulnerable and having others read my poems made me feel naked.  I started writing more story like poems that had nothing to do with how I was feeling and that led me to putting myself in he shoes of a character the same way I do when I write short stories and novels.  I envision how that person would feel and write the poem as though I were them.  Exposing that type of poetry makes me feel much less vulnerable.     I was rummaging through some of my old work and decided it was time to stop hiding.   I must admit that I am a bit rusty when it comes to writing new poems.  I am not as quick about the rhymes and flow as I used to be.  I guess part of me is still holding back from exposing myself too much.  I much prefer to write fictional stories, even if people recognise part of me in most of the main characters.  All this to say that I submitted some of my poetry and it got approved for publication in the Anthology Words of Fire and Ice.  This book quickly became a bestseller shortly after it's release, so I was pretty happy. 

I enjoyed working with Durham Editing and submitted my short story "Rain or Shine" for their summer Anthology.  I had originally submitted my sci-fi horror story "The experiment Gone Wrong" for Aspiring to Inspire and it ended up not being included in that anthology because of its length.  Durham asked me if I would like them to include it in their summer anthology, so of course I said yes.  It will be published in Summer Shorts 2 soon.