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.  

Wishing on a star

Excited about fantasy? It has exploded in bookstores and onto our TV screens, in the last few years and has changed the lives of many forever. Young, upcoming authors within this exciting spectrum now have new challenges and opportunities; new ideas are imperative as well as understanding that your audience is constantly evolving with the rapid growth of new technology and media.

Keeping up with this audience is essential as you divulge into undiscovered terrain to create your unique signature...

Meet Kia Storm of Story Star publishing, a bold intermediate fiction writer who encourages writers to move out of their comfort zone. Gone are the days when ‘brainiac’ writers only emerged from the darkness, after finishing their long awaited novel.

Instead, Kia’s name is fast becoming known in the literary world for her passion of networking at exclusive events. Inspiration comes from meeting diverse individuals and exploring new opportunities and reality.  It is not enough for young writers to only be great at writing; a vibrant personality coupled with their own sophisticated brand or attitude should also be presented to their readers.

In the age where video games seem to have replaced a love of creativity, Kia installs a deep affection for personal expression through her work and transports her teenage readers to a magical land of entertainment. Creativity is not only fun and glamorous but a way of life.

In reality Kia is also fast becoming known in the beauty and fashion world.

“You know life sometimes relishes in playing dirty tricks on you.” Kia laughs. “Whilst wanting to become a writer so badly, it is becoming easier for me to break into the fashion world without even trying. Opportunity presents itself to me. Yet the one thing I want from the pit of my soul seems almost elusive. Isn’t life funny?”

I guess I could fully understand that. I reflect on the jobs I had desperately wanted in the past and the ones I couldn’t care much about. Yet they were the ones brimming with enthusiasm to hire me for a post which I then begrudgingly accepted. All this whilst trying to get over a broken heart from a post that I had convinced myself that I absolutely must get.

I had accompanied Kia to a London fashion week show, where the company she worked for had sponsored a styling team for the event.

Glamour was present in abundance at London Fashion Week and created a beautiful mirage between reality and fiction; the perfect source of inspiration for a writer. Of course, it is true that the mainstream fashion catwalks might just follow mundane fashion trends and so might not instigate any new writing fodder. So what surprise was in store for me when I arrived?

Step forward ‘Fashion’s Finest’, a part of the fashion show that offers new/upcoming designers a chance to showcase their work. Through being a guest at the Sunday night show, I discovered that having no restrictions on what to produce and no brand to follow is very exciting and can arouse various creative thoughts.

Personal expression was explored to the fullest through a display of diverse fashion themes along the lines of nature, minimalistic as well as gothic. Traditional statements were simply pushed aside and the audience was propelled to another dreamlike dimension where beautiful creatures had their splendour enhanced through extravagant colours, exquisite fabrics and bold hair styles, in a candlelit arena.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Kia was having fun watching the models make their fierce and bold appearance on the catwalk. “It’s almost like the world I create late at night in my room. When I write I see things and can create an amazing colourful world before my eyes. Isn’t it just beautiful?”

I had to admit it was. I was getting to know Kia as someone so deeply engrossed in her work. She seemed fun and bubbly, kind of like me, eager to keep learning new things.

As I watch the magic, becoming even more immersed in it and this amazing new world, I asked myself the question:

Why is this surrealistic fashion world important? Like Jacqueline Wilson, one of Britain’s most popular authors, Kia considers a sense of imagination to be central to writing the perfect novel. The fashion shows, with its expressive concepts and designs presented new ideas that could be easily explored in her next fantasy novel. Inspiration for fantasy can be found in any situation and so exploring all avenues is critical.

Jacqueline said, “I had no brothers or sisters and from an early age I became one of those weird children who live in their imaginations. For inspiration I would cut out photos of girls from pattern books and stick cardboard on the back to turn them into paper dolls, each with its own personality.” 


Each model in show the show had their own personality which, was creating by their image but also by their unique swagger. Kia thinks that writers could not only have excellent writing material but could also learn important lessons about presenting/ marketing yourself as an author. 

As the saying going ‘seeing is believing’ and often seeing an idea in a physical form makes it easier to write about it on paper. Where else could you gain unique imagery set in a kaleidoscopic landscape than at a fashion show dedicated to showcasing the unseen part of the fashion industry? 


William Gibson, known as ‘the father of Cyberpunk’ felt that his latest book, ‘Spook Country’, came into being through visual impressions of places. He said, “My big imagination isn’t me sitting around at a coffee shop thinking I should write a novel about—that’s not it. It would be a bad novel. It would be all in my head and for me that would mean it would be dead. 


With Spook Country, it happened as visual impressions from a fairly consistent point of view.” Kia knows that the images seen at the fashion show will help keep it real for her readers and entice them into a world never experienced before.

So keep reading, keep writing and never forget to mingle… because you never know what you might discover!

Until next time…