Today is the day that my debut novel, Which One of Us, releases on Amazon. (Clicking on the title will take you to Amazon.) While I posted this announcement to my personal Facebook page last week, I must share how appreciative I am of the support I've received for releasing a book. For those who've known me for a long time, they know I've wanted to write. Shoot, most of my friends are authors or aspiring authors.
But becoming a published author takes a lot of work. I initially wrote Which One of Us in November 2013 for National Novel Writing Month (commonly known as NaNoWriMo for short.) For over ten years, this book has been revised many times, gone through two critique groups, and has had two editors go through different iterations of it. The more recent one was done by Cassie Mae with CookieLynn Publishing.
A couple years ago, after no real bites from agents and small publishers, I decided I would just go the indie pub route. (Independently published or self-published.) While a tough choice, I started to realize that I had a very negative mindset. Indie books aren't as good, despite the fact that a lot of authors (even internationally published ones who've had massive success) go this route. Now I'm not saying I'm par with any of them. But going the indie route isn't viewed the same today as it was ten years ago and definitely not the same as twenty years ago.
What was viewed as such a negative thing ("You weren't good enough to get an agent/publisher?") has lost a lot of that negativity--some people still don't understand. There's a lot of sadness I've gone through thinking I'm just not good enough. But the thing is, a lot of my author friends who have read pieces of this book have said it's good. These are some of the most critically honest people I know. If they think it's a good book, then I can take confidence in their words. These aren't people who would throw flowery lies just because they're afraid to hurt my feelings. These are people who want me to write at my best and they point out all the mistakes in my writing they can find and still state they like the story.
Is this book perfect? Honestly, I don't care. Because my goal wasn't to write some award-winning novel that is praised for its perfect grammar use. My main goal has always been to publish a book--whether I do that myself or not became less important over time. Eventually, I realized I was achieving a different goal all along, one that was very important and much more personal for me: Write and publish the book I would have wanted to read as a teenager. And so, here it is.
Not only that, I absolutely love the cover! Seriously, it grabs my attention. And while I'm probably a little biased in saying this, I can't ignore the compliments I've received for it. I'm still impressed at how perfect the cover is. For those interested, this awesome cover was designed by fellow author, Jaclyn Weist. Doing some numbers here, it took me about two years to figure out how I wanted my cover to look. It took me less than a second to look at this cover and say "This is exactly what I've wanted!"
So, if you're interested in a young adult mystery (no fantasy elements, no science-fiction), then please consider picking up a copy of Which One of Us today. And as always...
Alien abductions are involuntary, but probings are scheduled.
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