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Nancy Loyan

A Romance Novelist in Cleveland, Ohio

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Welcome to the real world

September 5, 2012 By Nancy Loyan Leave a Comment

Having a book published is a major milestone in life. After years of struggle, of pouring out your heart and soul, of overcoming rejection, your “baby” is born! Break open the champagne. Spread the news. Scream with unbridled joy.

Then … reality sets in.

The world didn’t move. Your picture is not plastered on the front page of the newspaper. Your book is not on the New York Time’s Bestseller List. You are not rolling in money. So much for the glamorous life.

Welcome to the real world of the newly published.

Yes, your book is for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and more. You have wonderful reviews and multiple “likes.” You’re a guest on many blogs. You’ve distributed post cards and inundated the social media. Obscurity, though, still exists.

Your publisher is well-established and has done a formidable job. The artwork on your book cover is outstanding. The content of your novel is above-average. You ask yourself what you’re doing wring. Nothing.

The fact is that you are a new name in the vast world of publishing. With the advent of electronic publishing and self-publishing (no, they are not synonymous), thousands of books are out there for the reading.  There are so many choices for the reader.

You’re a guppy in an ocean.

After your book is published, the real work begins. Trying to create a “buzz” and word-of-mouth promotion takes time and more effort than realized. You spend as much time, or more, marketing the book than writing it.

On top of it all, you’re a writer and have to write. The next book beckons and the next and the next. It is a continuous process. Another gets published and the circus begins again.

Welcome to the real world of the author!

Filed Under: Scribbles

Isn’t it romantic?

September 1, 2012 By Nancy Loyan Leave a Comment

When I tell people that I’m a romance writer, I get a myriad of responses. The eyebrows usually shoot up, I get a once-over and a snicker. It’s the same sort of response I get when I tell people that I’m also a Middle Eastern belly dancer.

I’m an anomaly. In my youth I was painfully shy, quiet and nerdy. I was more brainiac than sexpot. Somehow, through the years I morphed. Yes, a leopard’s spots can be changed. Maybe that’s why my favorite color is “animal print.” Anyway, that’s another story.

I’ve been writing my entire life and grew up reading all of the fairy tales and believe in “happily ever after.” Though I’m a feminist who believes that women are equal to men (in some ways superior), I believe that life is like a cake. The cake is great alone but the frosting, men, make it a lot more interesting and sweet. That’s why I prefer stories with endings full of promise.

Romance and women’s fiction novels offer hope. In this stress-filled, fast-paced, self-centered society, I’d rather escape to a happier place. These novels offer the vacation without the plane ticket. I’ve been snubbed for not writing “literature.” Literature, to me, is angst-filled drama, tense, dark and foreboding. It wins awards. Women’s fiction brings happiness and commercial fiction makes money.

When I write romance, I feel like Barbara Cartland, the grande dame of the genre. She, in her flowing gowns, perfectly coiffed hair and make-up, lounging on her settee with her fluffy lap dog. I get to experience another world. It’s the same when I transform into “Nailah,” my beaded and bangled, sensuous, exotic belly dancer alter ego.

I want my readers to escape and transform while they read just as I watch my students change when they dance. Through novels and dance, women are taught female empowerment, independence and how sharing one’s life with another is a choice and not a requirement.

When people asked what I did, I used to cringe in response. I now hold my head up high and smile with confidence and raised self-esteem. I’m a romance writer and Middle Eastern dancer. I’m proud of who I am and what I do.

One of my favorite aphorisms is, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

It’s not too late to transform.

 

 

Filed Under: Scribbles

My Writer’s Journey

June 22, 2012 By Nancy Loyan Leave a Comment

There’s the old saying, “To thine own self be true” and I’m living proof.

I was born and raised into a vanilla ice cream family and that was problem since I am a neopolitan person. Being different can be a blessing or a curse. Growing up in a middle class, working class, ethnic family during the 1960’s encouraged certain expectations for the youngest and only girl in my household. In high school, I took classes in shorthand and typing but mixed in college preparatory courses to my parents chagrin. I was a nerd when girls were expected to be flirtatious and popular. After all, bra size was valued more than IQ and a girl was expected to marry out of high school. I had higher expectations.

I graduated without any husband prospects. Actually, I had never even dated and wanted to attend college. I was given a choice: a small car and commuting to the nearby community college or two years at the college of my choice, during which time I would have to find a husband.

After choosing the car and community college route, I graduated with honors and the intention of furthering my education. My parents agreed with the understanding that I would attend a nice college and obtain the MRS before the BS.

Fooled them. I graduated from a prestigious four-year school with only my BS, majoring in business and embarking on a career in outside sales. Though I had been promoted to an executive level, my mother told the relatives that I was a secretary. Business was, after all, a man’s career.

To add further insult to the family, I married at the “old” spinster age of 28 to an older man. Gasp … we never had children (not by choice but circumstance). Procreation, after all, is a woman’s purpose in life or so I’ve been told.

Nonconformist that I am, I embarked on careers that my parents would never understand.
I decided to do what I love instead of just earning an income. Life is too short, I surmised.

Actually, me and Superman have a lot in common. We are both from Cleveland. By day we are both bespectacled nerdy writers but by night we transform. He into a superhero and me into “Nailah,” the Middle Eastern belly dance instructor and performer.

As a child, when I used to write, my mother would ask me why I was wasting my time, that no one was ever going to read my writing. Writing for me is like breathing, something that I have to do.

I became a writer and an author. I’ve freelanced for years, specializing in architecture, construction, profiles and special interest locally and nationally. I was commissioned to write two local history books, one a coffee table book on Cleveland, “Cleveland, Ohio: A Photographic Portrait,” by a national publisher that is widely distributed. One of my novels, “Paradise Found,” a multi-cultural romance set in the exotic Seychelles Islands, had been published by a small press as an e-book. The publisher, subsequently, went out of business but I am re-publishing it myself. In June, my paranormal romance, “Lab Test,” was published by Crimson Romance (www.crimsonromance.com), a division of large publisher Adam’s Media as an e-book. I am contracted for two more novels with them.

Over twenty-five years ago, I took my first Middle Eastern belly dance class and was hooked. Ever since graduating from high school, I have made a point of learning two new skills a year. This was one that I have pursued with a passion.

Middle Eastern belly dance is misunderstood. It is the world’s oldest dance, not oldest profession. It originated in Egypt as an expression of female empowerment, femininity and reproduction. The dance is not only a form of self-expression and exercise, but is mental and spiritual. The dance aids in self-esteem, body awareness and acceptance. It is meditative.

Dance has taken me around the country and around the world, having studied and danced in Egypt. I instruct at a university as well as at the prestigious Chautauqua Institution in New York State. I have a cadre of students and give lectures-presentation-performances to women’s groups and at wellness seminars. I even write about belly dance locally and nationally for the web magazine, www.Examiner.com

Like the Robert Frost poem, I have followed “the road not taken and it has made all the difference.”

Filed Under: Scribbles Tagged With: Dance, Publishing, Romance Fiction, Writing

Nancy Loyan

May 9, 2012 By Nancy Loyan Leave a Comment

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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About Nancy Loyan

Nancy Loyan writes fairy tales for adults that break down the barriers to love, and where happily ever after exists

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