An intense love for writing can certainly breed openness to receiving ideas. Inspiration often comes out of nowhere-music, dreams, and maybe even from people-watching. The influx of ideas could be so great at times that honing in on just one may be a problem. In fact, I’d been guilty of pushing a story idea away, putting one off as if it weren’t as “worthy” as the rest of them. The problem is, sometimes that shelved idea could be the one that may start it all.

The idea for Palace Hills came to me when I was a naive twenty-three year old. It was a story of heartbreak, pain, and star crossed lovers. There certainly wouldn’t be any room for it among the light-hearted romances that I had come to know and love…right? So, why did this story weigh on me heavily, almost itching to be told?

Unfortunately, I didn’t listen to my gut and placed the idea into the recesses of my mind. I’d surely get to writing it one day, I’d tell myself. However, that ëone day’ didn’t come for eight long years.

As many aspiring authors know, the query process is one of the most gut-wrenching things they’ll have to endure. Rejection after rejection, I couldn’t get out of the dreaded slush pile. After choosing to self-publish my first four novels, I was blessed to grow a rather humble reading base and, though self-publishing can lead to success for some authors, I still yearned to attain that ever elusive traditional publishing contract. If anything, it was more of a personal goal of mine and an ambition I held dearly. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, my stories would always got that big fat X – a generic letter, an automatic reply, a NO. So, what was there left for me to do?

Palace Hills called out to me again. In fact, the idea never quieted and would pop up even when I was writing something else. My instincts were definitely telling me something and finally I was ready to listen.

It took me eight years to finally pen this shelved idea and, honestly, I don’t know why I waited so long. The idea I once brushed off quickly found interest from two publishers and my long awaited traditional publishing contract soon became a reality.

Palace Hills was released through Limitless Publishing on September 9, 2014, and has become my stepping stone in so many ways. It not only grew my fan base, but also opened doors to contracts for seven more of my novels, two of which will be released later this year!

Ideas come to writers for many different reasons. Just because it may seem different, or maybe not mainstream, does not mean it can’t be the one to catapult your career.

S. Briones Lim is an Amazon Bestselling Author for her surf romance series, Caught Inside. She currently has five romance novels signed with Limitless Publishing, with two more to be released by the end of 2015. She resides in Virginia with her husband and rescue dog, Roscoe. Her guilty pleasures include popcorn, jalapenos and cherry coke.

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