I’m the creator Celeste Yates. My occupation is in marketing, but my passion in life has always been storytelling. Which is probably how I ended up as a storytelling marketing manager. But my imagination goes up and beyond the day-to-day tales of products and customer journeys.
I’ve dabbled in illustrations for children’s books, written a number of books myself, but I’ve never had the ‘breakthrough.’ It could be because self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to me, as I have a shy nature. Or it could be that I live in South Africa, and so the opportunities here are a little, shall we say, limited. But has that stopped me? No. I’ve self-published five pretty good books. Unfortunately, few people are aware these books even exist. That circles back to me.
But it also circles back to what my goals are and the value of them. Do I have a hunger/need to be on the New York best-selling list? No, not really. I just want people to chuckle as they turn the page. I want to flex my imagination to solve problems I’ve created for my characters. I want to jump bodies and narrate a tale as a skull.
Don’t we all?
I’ve given it all some thought. I’ve also given some thought to how the world has changed. I know there are readers still out there, but it’s not as big a thing as it used to be. There aren’t really big blog readers out there either. The tides have turned. I could have missed the wave altogether. I know that once, we turned to the internet for entertainment. But now we turn to social media for that and instead turn to the internet for answers to questions, like ‘Who voiced that character in Rango?’
But I’ve decided to stop hoping people find me in some strange cul-de-sac of an Amazon sitemap, and instead they can find me here. This will be my corner. And I will grow it accordingly.
The first few months, this space might not make sense. You’ll start a story, but it will give you options, and those options haven’t been built yet. You’ll have to wait. It’s an old-world thing – you know. Waiting. It’s not really something people do anymore. But for now, I hope you do. World-building takes time.
I hope you do. I hope you stay and browse. It’s another old-world thing – to ‘browse.’ ‘Explore.’ But it is fun. And I hope you chuckle, even though you will be scrolling and not turning pages. The vibe will be the same.
Start Your First Story
The Story Compass 