My new book will be published soon.
It's called The Waves of Change, and it's my first non-crime fiction story, so I'm excited and nervous at the same time.
I'm publishing it myself because I think that's preferable to waiting to catch the eye of an agent who is up to their neck in submissions and can't promise to reply..
Everyone tells me that, with four self published books to my name, I should be able to attract attention. Erm... nope; still waiting!
I know I shouldn't give up. I should be firing off submissions, and doing training courses to help me write 'the perfect pitch'. But, to be honest, I'd rather save myself the stress.
I love writing: editing the book to the stage where I feel proud; getting a second and third opinion; editing it again; waking up at night wondering if I remembered to put a line break in where there's a scene change; then seeing it typeset and someone clever and artistic coming up with a cover design.
And then, the reader feedback starts to come in. The merest hint of praise and I immediately bypass cloud nine, and fly straight to cloud ten.
So I'd much rather self publish and get the buzz from putting my book out there relatively quickly.
I'm telling you this because i know so many writers feel beaten by sheer numbers.
Millions of people have written books and short stories, and not all will be snapped up by a publisher.
But that doesn't lessen the achievement. Millions more haven't written a book, so let's be proud of ourselves, keep writing, keep trying to improve.
Maybe one day, one of my books will be spotted by an agent or a publisher. Maybe not. Either way, I'm already working on the next one!
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