Meet Everly Claire

We were lucky to catch up with Everly Claire recently and have shared our conversation below.

Everly, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

In a way, writing has always been my purpose. I have bestselling and award-winning writers in my family and I showed an early talent for it, so it was always in the back of my mind as something I would probably grow up to do. However, it was harder to find the type of writing I wanted to do. I wrote my first romance when I was 18 (although I use the term “romance” loosely because it ended tragically, as all my writing did back then!) But I didn’t take the genre seriously because I always thought I was destined to write more literary books. But after I got my MFA degree, I wasted a lot of time on that more “serious” writing, pretty much all of which turned out to be dead ends that my heart wasn’t in. At the tail end of the pandemic, struggling with mental health issues and looking for anything to give my life purpose, I dusted off the first few chapters of Never Broken and published it online. To my shock, people liked it a lot and encouraged me to keep going. When I finished, I chose to publish it. It did give my life purpose and explains why my first piece of advice to all writers is: Write what you want, not what you think you should. Because chances are other will people want it, too.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m the author of the dark dystopian romance series, The Unchained. It’s full of angsty forbidden love, slow-burn tension, and morally gray heroes who won’t hesitate to burn the world down. Never Broken, the first book in the series, came out in January — and, well, it’s not for those with a long list of triggers. The plot? Imagine what happens when a struggling but determined rich girl meets a nameless, enslaved genius on a secret revenge mission, in a brutal world where love between them is so forbidden it’s deadly. Did I mention they’re trapped in forced proximity and not allowed to touch? Book 1 is a slow burn, and Book 2 has three times the spice!

Never Broken is out now on Kindle Unlimited (https://books2read.com/u/3yJBwV), and Book 2, Never Bound, launches on April 25. There’s a social media tour with Torchlit Ink on the 28th and 29th (tinyurl.com/never-bound-arcs), and to celebrate and help folks get caught up, I’ll be making Never Broken available for 99 cents from April 25 through the 29th. (And yes, I know… there’s another cliffhanger and it’s brutal, but trust me, it’s worth it).

When I’m not (ahem) either torturing my characters or making them kiss, I’m writing about business and finance topics on a Caribbean island! In my romance author life, I’m all about protective, wounded men and heroines who start soft but find their strength, even when the odds are stacked against them. I’m so grateful for all the readers and fans who have joined me on this journey so far. I never expected to have so many people love these characters as much as I do, and I’m excited about telling the rest of their story!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Publishing is hard, writing is hard, and staying motivated when you feel like no one is reading your work is even harder. This took me a long time to learn, and I probably should have learned it earlier. I have very high standards for myself and get disappointed easily, even when I appear to be succeeding. I always wish I was doing better. There are many days I want to quit, but what kind of example would that set? Setbacks are part of everyone’s process, even the wildly successful ones, even if they don’t talk about them. What no one tells you is that nine times out of then, that “overnight” success is someone who’s been slogging through the trenches for a long time but that you just never heard about. My partner always reminds me how many times J.K. Rowling got rejected before Harry Potter sold, and let’s face it, sometimes it’s annoying. But there’s a reason he always brings it up!

Writing when inspiration strikes is great, but honestly? Most of the time, you have to sit down and do the work even when the muse is nowhere to be found. Treat your writing like a job—because it is. Your words don’t have to be pretty or even make sense—it’s a draft and no one will read it now but you. Just get them on the page. And lastly, put your ego aside. Our books are our babies and we all get defensive when someone critiques them, but I would not be where I am now if I hadn’t had my work ripped apart brutally in my MFA workshops (which I would not recommend). It was never easy, but you can make it easier by finding critique partners who get your genre and vibe and know how to be gentle when you need it or harsh if you ask for that. Learn to separate useful advice from what isn’t useful, because it won’t always be useful, but a lot of it will be. You’re the ultimate decision maker but always listen no matter how hard it is to hear, and be willing to revise (and revise again), especially if you agree with what the critiques say. I always say that real writing is actually more about revising and editing than drafting.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I don’t think you can be good at everything, and honestly, that’s okay. You have to accept your limitations, especially in a creative field where comparison can be brutal. But on the other hand, self-improvement is always worth the effort. For me, writing was all I ever wanted to do and the only thing I really believed I was good at. But at the same time, pushing myself outside my comfort zone is something I’ve done throughout my life because I’ve always said writers have to truly experience the world in order to write well. So things like learning to sail on a schooner crossing the Atlantic, moving to a Caribbean island to work as a journalist, taking a solo bus trip across Haiti to volunteer at an orphanage, backpacking solo through Central America, working at a primitive skills camp in the North Woods of Wisconsin, and camping solo in Alaska led to experiences I wouldn’t trade for the world, even though most of it terrified me (I’m still a very anxious person!). And I wouldn’t be the writer I am. And even though I once thought I’d write a memoir, that’s not what ended up happening. But once I realized that fiction was what I actually wanted to do, Never Broken was partially inspired by experiences I had on that trans-Atlantic boat trip. I’m never going to be some kind of world-class sailor, explorer, or memoirist (and I don’t want to be!) but every challenge, every skill, and every new place gave me more to pull from when building worlds and creating characters. So, while you don’t need to be great at everything, stepping outside your lane every now and then can boost the things you’re great at.

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Image Credits

Nigel Keegan
Everly Claire

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