Award-Winning and Bestselling Author: S.M. McCoy (Sky Robert) is the author of Sci-fi and Fantasy Romances such as the alien romance series Treasures of Trillume, Necia Alien Warriors, and the Dark Gods Rising Greek Myth Retelling Series about Medusa.
Born within the apex of another universe, where magic flows like leaky faucets, and forged from the fires of the Underrealm she dug her way to Earth and reluctantly participates in human society, secretly returning to her home world to relay the stories of her monsters, and the troubled love of her imaginary people. When she isn’t writing, she’s narrating audiobooks, reading alien romances and fantasy adventures, cuddling her tiny humans in training, and playing video games in the rainy city of Seattle, Washington.
Mom, Adventurer, and book nerd.
Birth of an Author: mini-narrative
Always fascinated with saving people, ever since she was a young parasite, no taller than the desk she toils away at now. This obsession started with saving the streets from litter bugs, and forcing her mother to head out with large trash bags and gloves scouring the roads, saving them from gross dirty things like used cans and food wrappers. Then progressing into wearing real, over-sized nurse scrubs as a Halloween costume, hoping one day to save people as a doctor, she soon realized that poking people with scalpels and needles felt like torture to help them. It’s a dirty job and someone had to do it, but that someone wasn’t going to be her.
So all her saving happened in her dreams, in her head, on paper, and in her stories. Thus, she created her alter ego, a writer who used powerful, yet vulnerable, anti-heroes to save the world one person, one world, at a time. And what is a saving-the-world adventure without romance? Only half the story, if you ask her. The stories started out half of what they should be… short, scared, young, covered in dust, and locked away in an evil tower to save the world from their premature nature. Yet, like Rapunzel, they decided to escape using their own hair, just one yanked page at a time. Until with nurture and time, Stevie Marie decided they were ready to see the world.
Questions and Answers:
Who represents you?
We are our own best advocates in the beginning. (wink wink) Making it work like Tim Gunn, and bringing the people what they want, when they want it, without years of waiting for the next installment. You’re welcome. Indie Author’s Unite. I am also a hybrid author, the Acatalec Series was picked up by The Wild Rose Press and traditionally published, but the rest of my books I do myself!
Why did you choose Indie Publishing?
I may be open to working with an agent in the future, if only to delegate some more responsibilities over to someone else, or republish and bring new readers to the universe, but I will always have books that I do myself because I enjoy the freedom of it, and also I’ve found that no one advocates for me quite like I do for myself. An interested agent would have to convince me that they are as dedicated as I am to the success of my books.
I’ve found that I make more money, find more readers, and overall have had more success on my own than with a traditional publisher, but then again, I haven’t been offered any deals from Random House, or any other Big Five with a marketing budget. Many indies will find that even traditionally published, they will STILL be in charge of their marketing success, and I find it’s easier for me to achieve my own marketing success while I have more control over what I can do with my books.
Full transparency, my traditionally published book has made less than fifty dollars, and will probably never pay me back for my investment in it. That’s right, I put my own investment into it, more than what my own publisher put in for editing/cover/formatting costs. Every book costs a certain amount to launch it into the world, and most authors traditional or otherwise will never break even on their own investment into the books they bring into the world. It is a labor of love, and why many authors choose to do it as a hobby or stop all together.
I, however, am not a writer for hobby, and as an indie author, I do it for love but also as a business. I would write regardless of profit, but profit is what brings each book to life and pays to continue launching the next book. I treat my author career as a business, a business I love! And like all businesses, there is a start-up investment, and it takes years before that investment turns into profit.
I’m pleased to report that given the current trajectory, two of my books have broken even (as of writing this) and I’m on track towards a profitable author career by the end of 2026! Help support the next launch by reading any of my books in Kindle Unlimited, becoming a verified purchase, grabbing a signed paperback from my store, or simply sharing my books with other readers you think would enjoy them!
What are your goals?
Around 4 books released per year. I have tons of ideas in my brain, and with your help all that crazy can become reality. It’s a curse… I can’t stop… won’t stop writing. <insert funny gif of a cat and typewriter and dancing, with glitter, and lasers.>
Want to know an answer to a question not answered here? Contact me, and I’ll add it. Or use Goodreads questions on my author page.
Or e-mail steviemarieauthor (at) gmail (dot) com
How do you write so many books?
I think the better question is how do I finish so many books, because it took me 8 to 9 years to complete my first book, Blood Crescent, a YA psychic vampire romance. I did complete that series, writing two more books, Blood Rebirth and Blood Queen. They are now, discontinued, but that is because I plan on completely rewriting them with better execution and more spice to match with my other writing projects more. But how did I finish them?
I struggle with ADHD symptoms, though, it's possible it's post traumatic stress, as symptoms are very much overlapping, or even possible neurodiverence, which is highly underreported in females, but it's mostly a self diagnostic. Merely confirmation of symptoms I must work through in therapy for management of them. I think accepting that I'm not broken was a big first step to actually completing tasks instead of having a mountain of unfinished ones. Labeling it, regardless of whether it's nuerodivergence, or trauma response from my childhood, it really didn't matter to me which it was, only to accept the symptoms my brain was providing and work with them. Beating myself up over it, wasn't solving anything.
Everyone is different on how they work with their brains to accomplish the task called life, and what worked for me will not work for everyone, but I accepted that I preferred to procrastinate and start new projects when things got hard or close to completion. I decided to trick my brain, by convincing myself that it was still procrastinating the current project to go back to an old project, and then as soon as my brain stopped hyper focusing on it, and realized that it was tricked, I would then do the same thing again by procrastinating that project the another already started project. Basically creating a revolving system of a closed loop until one of the already started 6 projects was completed. Once completing one project, I would allow myself to create a "new" project to add to the loop, but as soon as the hyper focus was gone, I would continue the loop until the next one was completed. It didn't matter to me which project was completed first.
Which is why, you will find that have SEVERAL works in progress, and will have a new work in progress every time I've announced a book has been completed and sent off to the editor.
CURRENT ROTATION!
Reaping Olympus: book three of the Dark Gods Rising Medusa Retelling
Unity University: A Unicorn-shifter academy romance
Goblin's Treasure: A labyrinth dark romance retelling
Mated to the Enemy: A lycan werewolf shifter romance
Kingdom of Acatalec: rewriting for relaunch a sci-fi fantasy vampire romance
The Serpent's Curse: rewriting the Divine series into an adult psychic vampire romance