My New Author Journey
So, how did I come to this point and decide that throwing my entry into the giant pot that is self published books was something I really wanted to do? The truth is, I guess it has been brewing for some time. Over Thanksgiving and Christmas break in 2022 I had the urge to revisit all the snippets and pages I had jotted down over the years. I’ve done this before, enjoying the trip down memory lane, maybe writing down a few more ideas or adding to the existing ones, but this time felt different. I actually had an urge to finish something. So, I collected everything together from Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox, surprised to find some documents dating back to 1999. I went through them all, and from that coalesced the idea of A New Age of Man. What about a fantasy magic origin story? I started writing down my ideas and quickly came to what I thought was a decent story arc to run with.
I would like to tell you there was a great epiphany or some jolt of inspiration that I could point to, but it was that simple. I just sat down and began to write. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the ideas, characters and writing of the first draft came to me. Writing in the evenings, after work, on weekends, holidays and using vacation days from work when the inspiration hit, I wrote. The first draft was done about 7 months later. I was kind of surprised with myself and if I’m honest I think Holly was also. I have had, shall we say, a short attention span when it comes to trying new things. I love the experience and thrill of said new thing and then it slowly fades off once the newness is gone. But here I was, 7 months later with a first draft of a book. It was a bit clumsy looking back, but it was there, the bare bones of a story. Insert, make sure you get a good editor here. With a lot of coaching and feedback from my editor and my lovely wife Holly, I began to edit. And edit. And then edit some more. Every time I went through the book I would find passages that just felt cringy, clumsy or just out of place. I would obsess over it. I’ve read my own book front to back, every word at least a dozen times, probably more, I wish I had had the foresight to count. Maybe on the next book. Anyway, I’m not sure if that’s a lot compared to other writers, but the time it took me for each pass, with the corrections and edits I made during each run…it feels like a lot.
Which brings us up to date and here we are. It has been an extremely fun ride and I’m already jones’in to continue on the second book. I wrote a few chapters in book two when I took some down time on A New Age of Man while it was with the editor. But once I got her edit back I purposefully put book two aside to concentrate on this first book’s release.
The release will be April 1 on Amazon to start and then hopefully reaching out through other channels and formats in the coming months. It has been an extremely fun and rewarding journey. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have had writing it.