How Vocal helped me publish my first books

Vocal has always been a powerful platform for me, as it helped me to understand my voice and how it has shaped my own perspective on life and the journey that has led me here with my writing. I had written a piece as well on gender perspectives, and this helped me to see that in my earlier narratives, I was consistently penning in first person, male perspective and that was something I did inherently. That was a big part of my author’s voice.

It was also a big part of who I was, I just didn’t understand it at the time.

A poem I had read that shook me to my foundations of gender identity was by my very good friend Josephine Mason, and here it is: Who I am.

This beautiful poem was about finding your true voice and also a bit of how dysphoria can trickle down from our voice into our own writing and just our own daily lives. It’s an excellent piece and it finally gave words to something I hadn’t been able to express about myself as a writer and as myself as an LGBTQ person my whole life.

Starting out with Vocal in February of 2021, I had two goals in mind: to catalogue my new and old works in a coherent and organized fashion(I’m so disorganized and have so many places with different files and drafts!) and to possibly win one of those enticing challenges!

I was able to accomplish the former,(still going to hold onto the hope I’ll win a challenge one day!), and also start on many new original fiction pieces that ended up being novels.

The first is a collection of a bunch of just some of the short stories I wrote on Vocal, most of them being created for quite a bit of the challenges, funnily enough. These stories are sadly no longer available on my Vocal profile, but available in the links below in paperback form. I have added a bit of new material in a few of these stories and changed them a bit, (not too much!) so if you enjoyed them here, you’ll enjoy them in print form too! It is a horror collection of twenty-two short stories that have drama and romance elements to it called Imprinted Phantasmagoria: A new collection of human horror, soft melancholy and wild fantasy.

A story I started here on Vocal was one I was very proud of called Carnivorous. It was about a Columbian immigrant named Arturo and his struggles with identity and his own dysphoria. He also has a dark secret from his past as he tries to find his true love(an angry looking but actually very kind police captain) in modern day New York. I had started this short story out with a decent amount of feedback and finished it without putting it on Vocal, and now it is on Amazon along with my novel (which I also started here on Vocal!) The Half Paper Moon.

This collection is called, Short terrors: The Half Paper Moon and Carnivorous : Two short stories of suspense, psychological terror and a bit of romance. It’s available in a hardcover format and for Kindle(free for unlimited members!!).

The Half Paper Moon is a drama mystery story that follows a grief stricken father named Steven and a young woman named Connie, and their journey to find justice for their loved one Barbara who was murdered by someone she knew.

The last story is on Kindle Vella and is an episode like platform for members and is currently in progress and not completed. It has awesome features like polls that you can interact with about the story and characters and is a fun way to experience new stories and step into someone else’s shoes. It’s called Atonement and is the sequel to The Half Paper Moon. It follows Edward and John from the first book and their relationship, and it’s themes are on forgiveness, trauma, redemption and love. Oh, and a risky prison break. 😂

So I hope you all enjoy your holidays. Vocal has my love and my heart for giving me the chance to express myself and organize my disorganized brain, and I’ll always keep Vocal close to my writing hand in case inspiration strikes again!

Here are the links to all of these stories on my Amazon page:

Imprinted Phantasmagoria: A new collection of human horror, soft melancholy and wild fantasy

Short terrors: The Half Paper Moon and Carnivorous : Two short stories of suspense, psychological terror and a bit of romance

And on Kindle Vella, you can read my new story Atonement about my original couple Edward and John, the first three episodes are free with membership.

Thank you all again,

Melissa ❤️