Sorry it’s been a few days since my last real post. I’ve been in a funk lately. Being a writer is very weird for me. My novel AOD: Succumb was written and essentially finished by 2001 but I was very hesitant to release it into the world. I was afraid people wouldn’t like it, I was afraid of what people would think of me since it is a horror story with a lot of gore, and mostly, I knew once I published, that was it, I couldn’t protect my “children” any more. But now that it is out there I want everyone to read it right now! Basically I wanted to debut #1 on the charts! Well as a nobody first time author, yeah ain’t gonna happen! But that doesn’t mean that slow sales, few FB post likes etc don’t affect me. But I must forge ahead! It will happen eventually! Anyway, enough self-pity! Back to where I left off last time!
This time last year, I discovered that the local community/senior center offered a creative writing course, so Mom and I joined. We discovered it’s less of a class and more of a support group for fledgling writers. I bit the bullet and read half of the Prologue of Succumb. Now, this center weighs more on the senior side than it does community, so I was the youngest in the class by at least 20 years! Needless to say, presenting blood, sex and gore was a hard thing to do… but the majority of them loved it! Especially the group leader, George. Now for George to compliment my writing was huge! George is an actor/producer/writer/radio host and he was the original voice of the red M&M!
This was exactly the boost I needed to finally decided to publish my “baby”. After a great deal of consideration I decided to self publish. I did a lot of research and found Llumina Press. What I liked about them was #1, they’re literally located 15 minutes from my house, and #2, they have to approve the quality of the work in order to publish you. They will not just publish anything for the sake of making money. So I was able to quickly get my book out there but also have the satisfaction of being able to say “They found my work worthy enough”.
I was still nervous though, having heard all the horror stories, so I requested a face to face with the Deb the Editor in Chief and without a beat she said she’d meet me at Starbucks the next day! What has followed has been a wonderful experience! My project manager has walked me through every step, gone above and beyond to help me, been patient when I dragged my heels on the final edits. And Deb, she has patiently petted my head and reassured me that everything is fine, it’ll just take time. Honestly the only problem I’ve had was with the printer printing the wrong graphic in a very integral part of the book. Once that was straightened out (2 books and 2 months later), I was finally released!
It’s really a surreal feeling to hold in my hand a book I wrote. It blows my mind to go on iTunes and be able to search for myself and search for *Nsync and know we’re both in the same database. And don’t laugh about my *Nsync obsession cuz it’s not going away! #sorrynotsorry!
But that’s my story up to where I am today. I’m trying not to obsess about ranking and sales and Facebook likes! Just a warning, I may occasionally whine to you guys about it, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum! 🙂
Until next time!
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