Two years ago, I embarked upon a journey - having waited for almost two weeks for my account to get approved.

I can't remember why I tried Steem to begin with - but it had to do something with looking for a way to make some cash while blogging.

I'd had several failed attempts at blogging, largely because:

1. Traditional blogging requires a "niche" to stick to (something I just can't do.)
2. Traditional blogging requires a lot of marketing skills to make any money at it. You can't even get a Google Adsense account if you don't have a market already established.

One of my biggest faults in this life is that I'm shy. I know what I can and cannot do without too much thinking, but I'm shy about telling the world about it (though if you and I were to sit down and start chatting, you'd find out pretty quickly.)

Shyness is probably also why I will put off any phone chores until I really have no other choice than to get it done - because I hate talking to people where I cannot see their faces/reactions and I have to fly by the seat of my pants. (At least with writing, I can go back and edit until I'm happy with what I've written.)

But I can't go up to someone and say: "Please give me money because I wrote this great book." I just can't do it.

With Steem though, I just keep plugging away (now that many Steemians know who I am and what I do) and people can choose to support me or not - and if they can't support with an upvote, they can give me a comment instead. (I will tell you the truth right now - that as nice as the upvotes are - good comments are like candy. So sweet!)

So...

Writing

It took me a long time to become brave enough to self-publish my first book (Friendship on Fire) back in 2014. I made my first attempt at a home-grown cover, though I didn't have half the skills I have now in either DAZ or Gimp. I also self-published Courage to Trust at that time, not really knowing where these were going to take me. I think I had a single sale on Friendship, but that was it. And I've not had any direct sales on any of my books since then.

But then, I'm not doing much to market myself... As I said, that's something that's extremely difficult for me to do.

Still, my stories was definitely one of the things I wanted to share on Steem, I knew pretty quickly, but I was worried that no one would like them - after all, I didn't have sales.

Despite the worries, I worked hard to bring both Friendship and Courage to a higher standard and developed several other stories that had been on the back burner for awhile (while "life" happened in 2015-2017).

In March, a whole three months after I joined Steem, I finally started posting my stories. I started by explaining a bit about them - since it is "modern fantasy" in setting.

Suddenly, one of my early chapters got a huge flow of upvotes and was suddenly worth 53 STU (before the crash...) I was shaking, I was so excited. I had received my first Curie upvote!

After a few months, (about the time I hit 500 SP and became a minnow) I was getting fortnightly Curie upvotes, almost to the day - my only significant support, but it totally made things worth it. Suddenly, I was getting support that was the equivalent of selling a dozen or more books!

(Since HF21, I'm getting more regular support and Curie no longer visits. The series received 29 Curie upvotes in all.)

Photography

I love sharing my pictures - and that's what I started off with. I posted 3-4 posts a day to begin with. It got me a bit of attention to do that, but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone now, lol.

I have lived in two different countries and have moved around a bit even since returning to the USA, so I have quite a few different areas to photograph, which helps to have plenty of material to help.

I'm currently trying to make friends with my new-to-me Nikon 7200. If nothing else, I'll limp along until my son comes to visit (May) as he has the same camera and highly recommended it to me when my Pentax K30 developed a serious fault that was common in the model.

Anyway, there will always be more pictures - even if I have to go back, re-edit things and share something again, adding more writing or even a poem to it. Lots of potential.

Graphic Art

This has been a major area of growth since starting Steem. As I learned new skills, I have been keen to share them - as others might benefit from what I've learned. From simple Gimp projects for contests, to elaborate DAZ projects for my book covers (and other challenges), I have pulled out the stops on my learning.

Other areas

I've also done posts on:
Natural medicine, New Age things (including the Lenormand oracle deck that I've nearly completed - 6 cards to go...), Genealogy, Musical Forays (where I compare covers and parodies of a popular song - or just feature a musician or subject.), my Cookbook which has been immensely popular, and even some craft and gardening posts... whatever I'm in the mood to post, really!
I love not having to have a niche!

Upcoming

This year coming, I should reach 5000 SP and hope to start actually taking home some money from time to time (even if only to pay for Christmas next year!)

NSFW - I have always enjoyed writing erotic romance, but have not generally felt brave enough to share it. Even now, when I have a single chapter (or two/three) which need the tag, I take a deep breath before clicking "publish" because it still feels weird.

My upcoming story Freyja's Fire is definitely more erotic than my previous stories, but I'm also planning on a two or three week interlude before then with a highly-erotic story, with NSFW tags on most chapters anticipated. It needs to come before Freyja's Fire so we'll see if we get there quickly enough. It wrote from nothing last week, so it may be a bit much to push through over the next two weeks...

I hope to start covering more natural medicine and new age posts over the coming months, but we'll see...

This picture I captured last year with my Pentax K30 when I was learning about its nighttime capabilities. Christmas coincided with a full moon last year and I was very lucky to capture this shot.

Here's to a great...

2020!!!

Let's make it ours!

---

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
blogging on: Steem, Whaleshares, WeKu

---