I’m continuing to detail the journey behind my first self-published novel that I just received a couple weeks ago. I want to share reasons why I decided to embark on this adventure. I’ve gotten some questions asking about why I self-published, what the story is about, etc. So let me continue explaining.
At the start of 2008, I entered the new year as a full-time novelist. So you can imagine my surprise (or maybe I should call it horror) to learn that the next book I was going to work on got cancelled by the publisher. It was going to be another Henry Wolfe adventure. Not only was I looking forward to writing another rollicking and fun tale, but I also hoped to sign another contract for more of these. But–well, these things happen in publishing.
The cancellation meant that the remaining part of the advance I was supposed to receive got cancelled too. That was sorta like someone saying you wouldn’t be getting paid for a couple of months.
Yamma. (That’s my slang for yikes and damn and oh mama and a few other things).
So I began to work on Every Breath You Take. I approached it as a book I would write and hope to sell to the general market. Perhaps I would even do it under a pen name.
Around March of 2008, I took a trip to New York to talk to my new publisher who I had signed with in 2007. They expressed interest in my love story but also urged me to stay in the genre that I was doing with them–the supernatural suspense genre. They were quite excited about my first novel with them, Isolation, along with future books.
Yet here I was, with a cancelled contract and another nearly completed novel without a contract. The most foolish thing I could have done was try and land another contract with another publisher. That would have been like going on a date with another woman when you’re on your honeymoon.
I needed to bide my time. Because, as I’ve shared before, EVERYTHING in publishing takes time.
So I kept writing Every Breath You Take. I finished the first draft on March 22, 2008. The plan was to give it to my agent, hear her glorious praise as the tears streamed down her face, then watch as she sent it to my NY publisher and hope they would want to publish it.
Then a couple things happened.
One is I went to get my taxes done and got confronted with a double Yamma.
Second is that I heard back from my agent who said that Every Breath You Take needed quite a bit more work before she could send it out to publishers.
My spirits were hitting Rock Bottom. And that’s when I decided to take a part-time job to earn some extra cash and bide my time.
It was April of 2008.