Saw one of those writer posts that makes me feel an odd duck. My authorial dream has never been the JK Rowling rich and famous package. My goal has always been to simply write the stuff I want to write and make enough money so I don’t have do work that isn’t writing.
Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to the whole NYT bestseller and movies thing it if it came along. It’s just never been a first order goal. More than that, I have friends who are at that level of success and it’s not without it’s downsides.
I’ve never been all that award or critic focused either. My main goal from day one has been to produce fast, fun books that casual readers and fans can love, with a strong secondary goal of not making my peers and more critical readers want to fling the book across the room. Basically, what I am trying to do is produce well written commercial fiction that a broad spectrum of people can have fun reading. I do try to put in layers for those who want to look for them, and I am enormously happy when people who are better prose artists than I am like my work, but really I just want to write stories that people want to read. Everything else is gravy.