Andrew Q. Gordon

Please welcome to the World of Make Believe, award-winning fantasy author, and my friend, J. Scott Coatsworth! I’ve read a number of Scott’s books and recommended him to anyone for whom he is a ‘new to you’ author. Today, despite being a talented, prolific author, he’d like to share a little about what it feels like to be an “Imposter.” Take it away, Scott.!

I Am an Imposter (And That’s Okay)

I’m a writer.

It’s not the only hat I wear, but it is the one most near and dear to my heart. When I don’t write, I feel wrong.

And yet, I’m also pretty sure I’m also a fraud.

Ask any writer who’s worth their salt, and they will tell you how often they have these feelings we call “Imposter Syndrome.” No matter how successful you become as an author, no matter how many books you sell or wonderful reviews you get, it only takes one bad one, one reader who calls you out, to make us feel like phonies.

I’ve literally had ten four and five star reviews for one of my books, and then one reader comes along and says they hated my book, and I’m instantly plunged into the dark pit of despair and sure that I have been found out as an imposter.

I think it’s because as writers, we are fragile types. We’re dredging up the contents of our souls and splattering them across the page in an act that’s both incredibly intimate and frightening. We expose ourselves in the way of all good artists, both because we have so many stories we want to tell, and because we want people to read them and like them. And maybe even buy them.

So when someone takes one of these precious bits of our souls and throws it down on the ground to stomp all over it, it hurts, and it exposes our secret shame. We are ever-ready to believe them because we have been brought up to expect a certain level of success from ourselves, from our work – the level that only a few Kings and Rowlings ever achieve – and when we don’t get there (or indeed anywhere close), we tell ourselves that it’s because we are not good enough.

Not talented enough.

A fraud.

An imposter.

A good writer knows this – indeed, we learn it the hard way. And a good also writer makes peace with it and uses it as a goad to get better.

I’ve often said when an author thinks they know it all, their art dies. Over the last five years, I’ve learned to accept those moments when my inner critic tells me I’m a fraud, to use them to push me to improve.

I love to write. I need to write. I am a writing shark, and like the shark, as long as I keep moving, I keep my writing alive.

I am an imposter. And that’s ok.

You just might like my work anyway. 🙂

J. Scott Coatsworth’s Oberon Cycle Series

Ithani Blurb

Time is running out.

After saving the world twice, Xander, Jameson and friends plunge headlong into a new crisis. The ithani–the aliens who broke the world–have reawakened from their hundred millennia-long slumber. When Xander and Jameson disappear in a flash, an already fractured world is thrown into chaos.

The ithani plans, laid a hundred thousand years before, are finally coming to pass, and they threaten all life on Erro. Venin and Alix go on a desperate search for their missing and find more than they bargained for. And Quince, Robin and Jessa discover a secret as old as the skythane themselves. Will alien technology, unexpected help from the distant past, destiny and some good old-fashioned firepower be enough to defeat an enemy with the power to split a world? The final battle of the epic science fiction adventure that began in Skythane will decide the fate of lander and skythane alike. And in the north, the ithani rise….

Oberon Cycle Series Blurb

Oberon is one of the natural wonders of the Universe – a half planet that shouldn’t exist, at least according to the laws of nature.

Oberon is also a nest of secrets. The Skythane – the first human colonists of Oberon – keep some of them, and so do the “landers” who work for OberCorp, the company that is exploiting the planet for its natural resources.

Now Oberon is in danger. A solar flare threatens to end most life on the planet, but an ancient prophecy leads Quince, Xander, Jameson and a small group of landers and skythane on an epic quest to save the planet – and unravel its secrets along the way. Other challenges await on the horizon, for the world, and its inhabitants. Will they find the answers they need, and their way to each other, in time?

Ithani Excerpt

Venin stood under the dome of the chapel, the waters of the Orn rushing past the small island to crash over the edge of the crater rim, where they fell a thousand meters to the broken city of Errian below.

The Erriani chapel was different from what he was used to back home. The Gaelani chapel in Gaelan had sat at the top of a tall pillar of stone, open to the night sky, a wide space of grass and trees that intertwined in a natural dome through which moonlight filtered down to make dappled shadows on the ground.

This chapel, instead, was a wonder of streaming sunlight, the columns a polished eggshell marble with glimmering seams of gold. Red creeper vines climbed up the columns, festooned with clusters of yellow flowers that gave off a sweet scent.

Both were bright and airy, but the Erriani chapel lay under a dome supported by fluted marble columns, a painted arch of daytime sky and the rose-colored sun blazing overhead.

The last time he’d gone to chapel had been with Tazim, before his untimely death.

Long before the troubles that roiled the world now.

Something drew him back. A need to reconnect with his past. To bridge the gap between then and now, between who he was and who he had become. Taz would have liked this place.

The chapel here had survived the attack, while much of Errian had not. The city below was a jumble of broken corrinder, the multistory plants that were the main building stock for the city. They would grow again, but the sight of the city’s beautiful white towers laid low struck him to the core.

So had Gaelan looked, after the flood.

Venin turned back to the chapel and unlaced his boots, baring his muscular calves before he approached the fountain that splashed at its center. The cool flagstone beneath his feet sent a shiver up his spine, and green moss filled the gaps between the stones.

Some builder whose name was lost to time had tapped into the river itself to make the fountain run, and the water leapt into the air with a manic energy around the golden statue of Erro, before falling back down to the pool.

Venin knelt at the fountain’s edge on one of the well-worn pads, laid his hands in the shallow water, and let his wings rest over himself, making a private place to pray.

Erro and Gael, spare us from danger and lift us up into the sky with your powerful wings. He gave Erro deference, being that this was his chapel, but he hoped Gael would hear him too. The god of his own people had been known to intervene in mortal affairs before, and if what Quince had told them about these ithani was true, they would need all the help they could get.

Venin’s wings warmed.

He looked up in astonishment to see the statue of Erro giving off an intense golden glow. His mouth dropped open, and he stood and stared at its beautiful male curves and muscles. Maybe the gods were answering him.

Venin reached up and touched the statue’s outstretched hand. The shock knocked him backward onto his ass, and he hit the ground hard, slamming into one of the marble columns.

Venin groaned, stunned, and reached back to feel his wings and spine. He seemed to be in one piece.

Taz would have laughed his ass off at the whole thing.

After a moment he sat up cautiously. He wrapped his arms around his legs and stared up at the statue, his chin on his knees.

The glow was gone.

Did I imagine it? He stood and felt the back of his head. A lump was already forming there. That’s gonna leave a mark.

Something had changed. Venin didn’t know what yet, but he was sure of that much.

He pulled his boots back on and laced them up. With one last suspicious glare at the statue, he turned and stepped out of the chapel, taking a deep breath of the moisture-laden air. Then he leapt into the sky to soar down to the broken city.

Ithani Buy Links

Publisher | Amazon eBook | Amazon Paperback | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | Kobo | iTunes

About J. Scott Coatsworth

Scott lives between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were.

He decided it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He seeks to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction reflecting their own reality.

Where To Find J. Scott Coatsworth

Website | Facebook (Personal) | Facebook (Author Page) | Twitter | Goodreads | QueeRomance Ink | Amazon