[Joely]

I apologise if this gets long and gooey. I'm just expressing a few thoughts that have come to me this evening as I write.

All my life, I've had this world in my head. I don't remember a time before it was there, and I certainly can't remember a time before it didn't have a major impact on my life. I've been writing for as long as I could hold a pen, and most of the time, I've written about that world. It's always been there, and I've been fighting with it.

At school, I was treated like a bit of a freak, I think. This imagination of mine is so incredibly huge that I often feel rather overwhelmed by it, and as a child I suffered from depression (I come from an abusive background too), which didn't help. I've had a very difficult relationship with what goes on in my head, from the eternal negative critic, trying to crush myself into the shape of what other people wanted me to be, and struggling to deal with this very insistent, persistent 'other place' in my mind. I've dreamed about it, when I'm running on the treadmill I lose myself in it completely. I can work 12 hours straight when I'm with it, when I'm really involved in it. I've got a degree, a PhD and I've done numerous jobs that require a high level of brain capacity but nothing uses it up like this.

It's called Amnar. For much of my life, I tried to push it out of the way. I was expected to do a degree, get a job and then live a normal life with a pension and family and all of that. Amnar got in the way, so I tried to crush it down, along with my dreams of being a writer and everything else I really wanted to do. I thought it was selfish and wrong of me to go after that, rather than doing the expected thing. Even doing a PhD was pretty much against the path laid out for me. Still, it's never really let me go.

Four years ago, at the behest of a friend, I began writing Amnar again. I let it completely take me over. I ended up having to balance it, a PhD thesis, and a full-time job for two long, painful but exciting years. I fought with my friends as I resisted getting it published, as they loved it. I still pushed it away, and I still fought with it. I think a lot of it carried over from being that freakish girl at school that nobody really understood, and I think it also intimidated both my parents that I could be so dedicated to it. By the end of last year, I had written twelve books, and I was being given the funds to write full time and prepare for the podcasts.

After reading one of Steve's articles about marketing from conscience, I suddenly realised that one of my issues with being a writer is how selfish I feel it is to go playing in Amnar, and expect other people to read it and enjoy it. I've often felt a little guilty asking people to read it, as though there's no way they'd enjoy it or get any benefit from it. My problem with putting it out there was that I felt it had no value to anybody other than me. I broached this with a few friends who reminded me that firstly, I've already gathered a number of things from it that may benefit others, and that secondly, I can't really tell how beneficial it is to the rest of the world.

The last three months have been hard work, as I've gone to work on myself to try to resolve all the issues from my past and present once and for all. One thing remains, though, above all. It came to me tonight, and I realised for the first time how much I dearly, dearly love Amnar. Some of us (i.e. my friends, agent etc), treat it almost as though it's an independent entity - sometimes called the leviathan. It's had a puzzling faith and persistence in me, even when I haven't.

I feel incredibly honoured that I've been given this gift. It's hard to explain it in words because people assume that it's like writing an article or is somehow organised and emotionless. Amnar isn't built or designed, it grows organically. It's tightly bound to my synaesthesia, I see what I'm writing, I'm emotionally involved with my characters and I adore or hate them as much as my readers do. I have never loved like I love this thing, whatever the hell it is, and I couldn't imagine life without it. I've been incredibly lucky that whatever forces are out there (universe, god, whatever) seems to have conspired to get it into the world despite my best efforts to keep it hidden.

In seven days, the first podcast is launched. I've been terrified, stressed out, bamboozled and discombobulated over it. Never have I released so much and so hard over anything in my life. It's like sharing my heart with the world, and I'm very scared and excited all at once. I hope, I really hope, that it is as beautiful to others as it is for me.