The Author 'career' ladder - part 2

Ready to discover the key to Kia’s writing success?

Kia is very much a fan of teaching yourself and so started reading more about marketing herself as a young author and about marketing in general. She backed this reading up with a few stints of marketing work experience and picked up a lot of new tips along the way.

After a year, she found herself as a young marketing manager of a leadership company for black and Asian minority managers and senior leaders.

Over the last year alone, she has been to London Fashion Week, the Top Model of Colour Awards and has become creative director of a fashion show to name but a few.

But, she did not forget her publishing dream. While she did this work during the day, she truly came alive at night with her new gradual plan for getting published: writing short stories.

“I remember thinking that I could never be taken seriously as an author let alone get anything published. Writing has always been a part of me. I always used it to help me through tough times but I never wanted it really before this.

I wanted to be an entrepreneur, to be a boss to be creating something larger than myself. I saw writing as too passive. I remember going through the worst period of my life and the only thing that helped me was to write away the pain, “she explains.

She continues: “I kept writing short stories and I remember my friends encouraging me to send them off but I used to shake my head and say, ‘Who me? A writer?’

I remember sending off my first story, just to put a stop to my friends’ mantras but I was shocked when it was accepted. Then I sent another and another and it just spiralled from there. In fact, I loved writing so much I did it anywhere and everywhere.

It’s my passion, my heart, my soul and I know most writers, true writers would know exactly what I am talking about. It’s a part of you that must be expressed whether you are published or not.”

So, two years later, the young Kia Storm had published over a dozen short stories and armed with this experience was ready to take on the book publishers again.

After carefully crafting her new book proposal, she finally found an agent, a stylist, a book editor as well as a publishing company together with a PR manager who are now working hard to promote her after realising her writing potential.

So, her small steps to become a young author, in the form of short story writing paid off!

Even Charles Dickens started his fiction writing career in 1833 by writing short stories and essays. His first short story ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ was published in Monthly Magazine in December 1833.

After this, he went on to publish some of the greatest classics ever written such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

Similarly, Steve Barnes co-author of the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series has said:

 “Work on shorter projects. Short stories or articles. Do not write books until you have published (and been paid for) shorter work. This is like running a marathon when you’ve never run around the block!”

Have you ever experienced success by starting small? We always want to know what our readers get up to.  

New year, new directions

Well, hello readers and hope you are enjoying your New Year so far. So far, we have a lot of interesting new developments in store that will be revealed soon. That’s what has kept us busy for the first few weeks of this New Year but we are back with a mission to engage and entertain.

Last year, we talked about how important it is to make a plan for the New Year and then stick to it. Now Kia would like to share her experience of how she got her publishing dream on track in just one short year. So here are the secrets to her success:

-          Always know that there is no limit to bettering yourself

From the start, Kia knew that bettering her young life experiences could help her on her journey.

So she decided to become a young marketing expert and got her first managerial role in a leadership company after learning and practicing several marketing techniques herself. Her skills were furthered as she landed new opportunities in education and fashion.

Always be realistic and believe in the importance of transferable skills. She is now a force to be reckoned with and is much more than a traditional young author!

-          Know your market and take your craft seriously

Kia has always loved writing and has sold several short stories to publishers before landing her dream opportunity to publish her book. In addition, she does various marketing jobs during the day to earn money so that she can sustain her publishing dream during the evenings and weekends.

-          Have a Plan

A plan helps you to stay on track with your goals that enables you to set milestones in order to track your success and failures so that you can become better at what you do.

-          Look in various areas for inspiration

Kia goes to a lot of events and meets a lot of interesting people through her day job meaning that she does not lead a traditional author life. The benefit is that she can then advertise herself in new, unseen arenas and can source new opportunities to work with people that she would normally not come into contact with in the publishing industry. As I have said before, creativity really does pay off and will help you get noticed.

-          Take Risks

Do not be afraid to take risks. Like the saying goes, feel the fear and do it anyway!

-          Be Patient

Success and achievement always takes time to materialise therefore it’s important to understand that patience and resilience is the key to getting from the bottom to the top.

-          Raise your Standards

Always aim to be the best you can be and keep striving for excellence.

-          Last of all, never give up hope!

I know that from shadowing Kia that she has been rejected by editors and publishing companies on more than one occasion telling her that her idea will never work. However, she has continued to believe in herself and her writing dream is now a reality.

She continues to ensure that her writing will be known by everyone and soon enough she will be recognised for her initiative to help the world fall in love with literature again!

So don’t any of you ever give up on your dream.... As the saying goes, try and try until you succeed. 

Overcome the past, move towards the future: part 1

PART ONE

From an early age, I learnt the hard way that life is full of challenges and it is not always easy to fit in with the crowd. I remember how, at school, it felt safer to keep a low profile and just follow what was hot at that moment. This can often be limiting, as it can prevent you from ever really being yourself and embracing your differences and just living your life the way you want to live it.

The strangest thing I find is that as we get older we are still caught up between this vicious circle, which carries on into our professional (adult) world.  We care too much what others think of us and this can limit our full potential.

I guess that when I was growing up, I wished I could have been more like the popular beautiful girls in my class. They all had beautiful figures and lots of male attention and were always being invited to infamous parties, which was the talk of the class the next day. 


Most of these girls were super skinny unlike my hips and bottom which were always too large for my liking. It seemed like every piece of clothing just hung on me. Plus it wasn’t cool that I could always be found somewhere in the library reading or doing my homework. As I hard as I tried to look and fit in with the in crowd, I just did not have the grace, looks or hair to pull off the hairstyles and clothes.

So I knew I didn’t have the glamour to compete with these super human creatures but, I had the brains. And boy, was I good at coming first in class! I felt that I had to study in order to be good at something and study I did. 


The better grades I received, the higher my status amongst the nerds! I was officially top of the nerd status list and I was proud to be there! But being a nerd had its disadvantages.  I was always bullied for being that girl who just studied all the time and was never accepted in the ‘It’ crowd, no matter how hard I tried.

And no matter how clever I was. In fact, it seemed the cleverer I became, the more I got picked on. I was getting good grades but something was missing. I had a longing for more than just being known as that nerd! I was never happy. I just wanted to be like the others. I wanted their lifestyles and even their boyfriends or at least a boyfriend. The popular kids were just a rare breed in my eyes. They were different. They were the apple of society’s eyes.

I grew up thinking the popular kids had life easy and when Kia confirmed that she was always popular at school, I felt slightly angry. She couldn’t possible understand me as a person and how much I have struggled.

From time to time, Kia talked about the power of women and how you have to stay true to who you were. I felt myself struggling against the urge to blurt out, “Easy for you to say. You have always been popular. You have no idea what it was like for me.”

It wasn’t until I noticed the questioning look on Kia’s face that I realised I had revealed my true thoughts. I really should have been more careful. They weren’t longer in my mind. I had said them and she had heard them.

“I didn’t mean...”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m use to it.”



There was an awkward moment of silence between us and for a split second, I thought I had blown the opportunity to shadow her for sure. We were sitting at Prêt and she was having her usual latte, “I hated being popular,” she said suddenly. 


“You thought you were bullied for being a nerd? Well, I was bullied for being too popular. Girls can be so mean at times and I had the bad end of the stick. Girls were afraid to have me around because they thought I was either going to hit on their boyfriend or make them look bad.”

She went on, “They were always trying to pick a fight with me because they thought I thought I was better than everyone else. I was always an easy target for both girls and boys easily picked out from the crowd and I hated the fact that I stood out from the crowd.”

Pausing for a moment, she stared into her latte as if she was seeing something I couldn’t and suddenly, her eyes were filled with sadness. I knew she was reliving some painful experience from the past. “I had so much pressure put on me that it was unreal. People told my mother she should be so proud of me because I was going to do so great. 


I became obsessed with being perfect. I remember when I didn’t get the GCSE grades I was predicted, I stayed in the park, afraid to go home, afraid to say ‘Hi mother, yeah, well you know those grades you were expecting, well, they didn’t happen’, ” she said, exasperated. 

She looked up at me. “You know there is a memory that I have that stick with me even to this day, when I think about it I push harder than ever to be somebody,” she mentioned.

“Tell me,” I said. I was curious and busy jotting down what she was saying in my note pad. I was hungry for more. I wanted her to spill all.

“I remember my first Psychology lesson, at college, when some guys just couldn’t stop bothering, like flirting, you know and I was trying to pay attention but they just wouldn’t quit. The teacher turned around angrily and told me to leave the boys alone and stop distracting them, even though they were the ones bothering me, “she stated. 

“You know what he said to me after class? He said, ‘You may think that butter can melt in your mouth but, in my class you are just another silly girl that thinks their looks is going to get them through life and it won’t. You won’t reach anywhere but, just have babies like all the others’.”

I didn’t know what to say to Kia, particularly because I couldn’t understand the effect that comment would have on her.

 “As a little girl, I always got so much attention that I became scared of going out.  But you could never tell because I always had lots of girls around me, ‘my crew’ I called them and they gave me that protective comfort, “she says, reflecting on some happy times.

“I felt safe with them and I wouldn’t go anywhere without them. I was brought up with a grandmother that told me I had to be smart, that looks fade and so I can never rely on them. It was embedded in my brain so much that I had an obsession to be taken seriously. 


I had this pretence air of confidence about me. I was determined to be taken seriously, coupled with the fact that I was extremely competitive. I didn’t want to be boxed in by anything and I fought hard against anything that tries to confine me.”

“Well... it’s all been for the good,” I said. “I mean, you are driven and you are focused and you seem to really love people so you were able to overcome all those negative...”

“You would think,” Kia said, cutting me off immediately. “You know what my biggest fear is? The bad memory of that teacher remained with me for a long time and I fought so hard against his voice. It uses to haunt so much that I rejected the idea of having kids, just being known for just that. It has taken a long time for me to accept myself for who I am and I am more determined than ever to embrace my differences.”

For a while, I couldn’t speak anymore, shocked and intrigued at what I had just heard. Whatever did happen next?

PART TWO CONTINUES.....

The importance of a positive mindset for your future

In this age of hardship, is it easy to let our troubles rule our lives, than to stand up like a noble modern day Joan of Arc and fight for what we want in life?

“It’s important never to lose sight of our dreams,” Kia once said to me. “Sometimes things can get so difficult that we end up losing sight of what we are fighting for in the first place. Having the mental determination to achieve is  vital in life, no matter what it throws at you. Why should anyone else have the authority to change it?”

I thought long and hard about what Kia had said. Everything seems so easier for her now but she had assured me that for a very long time it wasn’t.

 “There was once a time when each morning I had to convince myself I was truly happy just to stop feeling sad for just one day. I hate when people make you feel that your time is running out. We live in such a fast world, where everything must happen now and when it doesn’t, we never ever think positively.”

Was that really the case? Can everything really get better with a little bit of positive thinking? Does having the right mindset guarantee to always keep you on the right track to success?

If there is one thing that I can say through my journey of shadowing Kia Storm, it is that she is very determined and persistent. It was almost as if deep down in her heart, she really believed she was going to be this great, young writer. She believed in her dream so much that in less than a year she had over a dozen short stories published. 

“I love to push myself.” She would say. “Sometimes pushing myself harder reminds me that I’m still alive.” I didn’t understood what she meant by that and she didn’t elaborate. I had asked her peers about her and they all said the same thing. She was a workaholic.

 “What’s your book about?” I had asked her, but she only smiled and said.

“It’s gonna be epic. It’s about a whole new world, a world which I dream about, colourful worlds with super human creatures. Oh boy, it’s going to be awesome.”

That was all she said and even though I pried further, she only smiled even more revelling in my curiosity.

“You will read it next year,” she said.  Kia was talented and she said that for a long time, she tried to convince people of her talent. But the day she stopped trying to convince them, was the day they started taking notice of her.

“There are many individuals in life that will not see your talent immediately and will try and tell you that you should give up on your ‘fantasy’ and try something new. You start to think differently as you see people around you who are unemployed or are in a job that purely pays the bills and think maybe you should do the same,” Kia explained.

“But, even when life gets difficult, you need a strong, self – believing state of mind to help push you further to achieve your passion.” But, what is the main message here? Does this mean I too need to become a workaholic in order to become successful?

It seemed to me that Kia’s mental resilience has led her onto this amazing publishing juncture. In order to keep her aspiration of being a young fantasy fiction author, Kia leads a busy life. Her normal week consists of juggling two jobs per week; one where she works in the fashion industry preparing models to showcase diverse fashion on the catwalk and the other where she works on leadership training events for aspiring leaders and head teachers in various schools.

Both jobs took time to perfect and get used to and after work, usually in the late hours of the night, Kia pushed on with her main love of writing. It was this determination that earned her a reputation as a  young short – story writer and now had lead to the biggest accolade of all. It is the start of a challenging yet exciting trip to being a young published author, in just a year. Even more, she still has the time to encourage many young individuals like myself who still have to make their mark in the professional world.

American professional basketball player, Kobe Bryant has also displayed an extreme determination to follow his passion for his sport even when injuries could have got the better of him. He dislocated his right little finger during the 2008 – 2009 season but carried on playing, even when most players would have thrown his the towel and chose surgery over the game. His bravery and passion paid off as he went on to win his first award as the league’s most valuable player. His friend Hilary Swank once said that he likes to ‘get his mind out of the way’. By not thinking about his problem, he becomes strong enough to overcome it.

Like Bryant, rather than focusing on her struggles, Kia has picked herself up after every rejection and has continued writing and believing in herself. After a while, there were many who did offer her opportunities but, would she have ever got there if she just stopped trying? Michael Robotham, international crime writer and ghost writer for celebrities such as Geri Halliwell and Lulu, is no stranger to the difficulties of being in the right mindset.

He said, “I have wanted to be a novelist since I was about twelve and always saw journalism and ghostwriting as being stepping stones. I think writing can be taught, just as tennis can be taught, or golf or painting, but showing someone the theory won’t make them a great writer. Nobody else can put words on a page for you. It takes practice. It takes perseverance. Most of all it takes passion. If you’re writing for fame or fortune or posterity, prepare to be disappointed. If you’re writing because you’re passionate about it, prepare for a life long love affair.”

So my conclusion is that it looks like the professional world is a tough place to be in and success is not always at your fingertips. But, keep on trying and soon you will reach your ultimate ambition.

Keep reading and stay tuned for more...

Getting out of your comfort zone

Earlier on in this journey, Kia asked me to attend one of her networking events. It was a fashion show that she was involved with and she was eager to introduce me to people she thought would really help with my writing experience. Since I was eager to explore her world of networking, meetings, latte’s and lunch on the run, I had no choice but to man up to the challenge. I would have to act like I was a pro at this.

If only Kia knew how shy I really was. But as usual she had that bright smile on her face that said, “It’s okay Rochelle, you’ve got this.” As she introduced me from one person to another, I could feel my heart beating against my chest, especially as she was introducing me as the next big thing in journalistic history.

“What?” I nearly screamed in disbelief.

She smiled and squeezed my fingers as if to way, don’t worry, you will one day.

And suddenly I felt a little bit more reassured. You see, Kia had a way of making you feel as though you could achieve anything in the world.

“The world is everyone’s for the taking.” She would often say, “You can be anything you want to be in this world and maybe even the next, who knows. I mean ever year we get older, so why not get older chasing our dreams, right?”

She was such a free spirit. I wondered if anything really scares her. 

“Why did you choose to name yourself Kia Storm?” I shouted over the roar of the crowd. I couldn’t tell if she hadn’t answered because she couldn’t hear me, or maybe she didn’t want to tell me, but as if oblivious to my question, despite repeating it a second time again, she pulled me into the depth of a crowd of smiley importance people.

Ask yourself this question. Do you dread trying out new experiences? Am I taking the coward’s way out, just hovering by the drinks stand all evening instead of interacting with new people, pretending that I’m not listening to conversations from afar?

A sensation of déjà vu overcomes me as I know I have been in this exact situation; preferring to apply for new opportunities behind the safety of my computer without having to engage in spontaneous conversation with anyone.

Just in case I said the silliest thing and suddenly they will look at me as if I have a cat on my head or something. I remember being perfectly happy never breaking out of my own bubble, never doing anything extraordinary and never breaking out of my own space.

Someone once told me that public relations can never be taught; it is something that you must learn through practice. I used to hate networking.  Many teachers told me that I should start networking in the media field as the most interesting opportunities are passed on through making contacts.

I always felt uneasy when networking, especially if I was networking with the aim of trying to get job. I knew that I was only speaking to employers in order to get into the professional world. I was not interested in knowing more about them as an individual person and building a personal relationship with them even though I knew that this was what I was supposed to do. I rarely followed up initial meetings thus, giving them the impression that I was not serious about getting into this industry.

So has meeting Kia made a difference at all?

But when I was introduced to Kia, my fear of meeting new people seemed to vanish, at least for a while.......