Note I did not say ‘despair’, I used ‘disrepair’ for a reason.

After a long, complicated, and frankly exhausting breakup with my previous publisher, the relationship ended and I finally—finally—got the rights back to my books. On paper, it’s the dream: I own my worlds, my characters, my spicy chaos, everything. Total creative control. Freedom. Fireworks. Cue triumphant music.

And then reality walked in with a clipboard and a migraine.

Because “getting my rights back” didn’t just mean “Yay, I can hit upload now!” It meant: I am now the writer, the editor, the formatter, the art director, the production assistant, the metadata goblin, and the unpaid intern who brings everyone coffee. All in one very tired body.

I’m going through my entire back catalog—book by book, series by series—prepping everything for KDP. We’re talking full re-edits, new formatting, updated front and back matter, fresh covers, keywords, blurbs, series page alignment…the whole circus. Some of these books were written years ago, and opening those files feels like opening a time capsule and a crime scene at the same time.

On good days, I reread passages and think, “Oh. Oh, that’s actually really good. She had something.” On bad days, I’m staring at a paragraph wondering why I thought that sentence needed four commas, two ellipses, and a dramatic sigh. And don’t get me started on early spicy scenes. Growth is real. So is secondhand embarrassment.

Formatting has been its own special flavor of torment. Margins, page breaks, inconsistent styles—past me apparently wrote like no one would ever have to look under the hood. Every book needs to be cleaned, standardized, and dressed up so it looks like it belongs in the same universe as the rest of the series. Meanwhile, I am over here trying to remember why Word suddenly decided all Chapter Ones should be bolded and indented into another dimension.

KDP and I are in a committed, slightly toxic relationship now. I’m in that dashboard every day:

• Uploading new manuscripts.

• Fixing tiny errors I notice at the last second.

• Tweaking keywords and categories so the books actually have a chance to be seen.

• Re-uploading because I spotted one rogue extra space on page 247.

And each book isn’t just a file—it’s a whole process. New cover? Check. Updated blurb? Check. Series order formatted correctly? Check. Then, there’s the emotional part: revisiting who I was when I wrote each one. The phases of my life are baked into those stories. Sometimes that feels empowering. Sometimes it feels like I’m editing old diary entries and sending them back into the world.

I won’t lie: it’s exhausting. There are days when all I want is to write something new and fun and unhinged instead of reformatting Table of Contents links for the fourth time because they broke during conversion. There are nights where I’m up at 2 AM wrestling with a file, asking myself why I ever thought being an author was a relaxing career choice.

But here’s the part I keep coming back to: they’re mine now. Fully, completely, no asterisks. I get to fix things that always bothered me. I get to update covers to match the tone I meant to hit. I get to make decisions based solely on what’s best for the stories and the readers, not on someone else’s schedule or bottom line.

Every time I finally hit “publish” on a reclaimed book, there’s this quiet, satisfying click inside me. Like another piece of my career snaps back into place. I might be exhausted and cross-eyed from staring at Word documents all day, but I’m also weirdly proud. This is messy, unglamorous work—but it’s mine.

So if you’ve noticed I’ve been a little quieter, a little slower to post, a little buried—this is why. I’m working my way through years of stories, giving them the treatment they deserved in the first place. It’s a lot. Some days it feels like too much. But I’m doing it, book by book, chapter by chapter.

And when it’s all finally done, I’ll have something nobody can take away from me again: a catalog that exists on my terms.

Until then, I’ll be over here arguing with page numbers and drinking questionable amounts of caffeine.