June | 2013 | Steph Nuss

The awesome thing about being an artist is using your gift or your art for good.

That’s one of the best things about being a writer–millions of people read your words and take something from them.

That’s also why I believe in not only telling a great love story, but also supporting a variety of causes in doing so. In the My Kind of Lover series, I have designed each plot around two lovers and their love story. The lovers, either individually or together, become advocates to certain causes because they’ve either personally been impacted or know of somebody or something that has been which causes them to bring awareness to you, the readers, by showing their support to such causes. You’ll see throughout the series how each book brings awareness to certain charities like Susan G. Komen for the Cure or March of Dimes or the Special Olympics just to name a few. Each book has some cause it hopes to bring awareness to.

It’s my goal as a writer to use the passion I have to help those in need because my voice can be heard through my stories, and I hope all of you take something special away from the lovers, their story, and their support for their causes.

I thought I’d share with you all some of my inspirations for writing.

The first is definitely music. I have a ton of music on my iTunes in all sorts of a genres and will be creating playlists for each of my books for the readers to fully understand what inspired each one and some of the characters. They are definitely more upbeat than other playlists I’ve seen from other authors. There’s a reason for this. I don’t listen to music while I write. If I did, it would be a disaster. Trust me, I’ve tried it. I know a lot of authors who do this and major kudos to them because I physically and mentally do not have the ability to do it. However, I do listen to music during my workouts or when I’m walking my dog so I’m constantly finding music that inspires my writing or my characters, and I think that’s really important to the story and important to share with the readers.

The second is poetry. I found a girl by the name of Charlotte Scott who creates the most beautiful poems. I actually spent weeks hunting down her blog because someone posted one of her poems on Pinterest and didn’t tag her blog (so irritating). Anyways, I feel like most of my characters can relate to her poems or their love story can relate to it. I also feel like most of my readers will be able to appreciate her work and how the beauty of her words incorporates into my characters and their story. I’ve asked her if I can use her poems at the beginning of each book in the series and she was more than happy to let me publish her work in my own. This is also a really great way to promote her and her talent and I’m happy to do so. It’s important that writers promote one another and I’m more than thrilled to share her work in my books since she’s been such a huge inspiration to me and my characters.

The third inspiration would be my fellow writers. I’ve become friends with several writers through Facebook and Twitter and the support from them has been amazing and I know I’ll never be able to thank them enough for it. Jamie McGuire has amazing self-publishing information on her FAQ page on her website that is extremely helpful. A special shout out to Jennifer Probst as well because without her and her feedback I don’t think I would’ve ever started this series. Her thumbs up was the boost I really needed and if I ever meet her in real life, I’ll probably go bananas. I’m extremely grateful to other authors for taking the time to help us aspiring authors with our questions as well as just promoting one another. The endless love for indie writers and/or self-published authors is amazing, and I’m happy that I’ve chosen this path.

Write on my fellow writers, write on!