Hi - the first of my ramblings!

Hi and welcome to my ramblings.

I am a fledgling Indie author and would like to share my exciting journey with you. I'd like to hear about your personal tales along this road and share info and useful sites as we go.






For me it has been a bit of a personal awakening, finding out what a perfectionist I still am. I had honestly thought I'd worked my way through that one but it was hard to send raw copies to family for their opinion. I did tell them there were lots of typos etc, and asked them to look at the character's developments, whether they could picture the scenes and if it flowed, whether there were repeated words or paragraphs and if it was enjoyable. I felt a little nervous and sick until the feedback began to trickle in. Very useful comments that helped me to improve the story and give me more work to do.



A friend suggested some small sketches would be good....


I bought some thin drawing pens and began to play.
I discovered it was fun and drew one for each chapter.
It was hard to decide what to draw, it had to be simple and not give any secrets away.




 
 

Meanwhile I was still working on the cover design- couldn't pay anyone and couldn't find a stock one for the story, so I decided to have a go myself.
It is not perfect and I can now see how to improve it, but it's ok and out there and eye catching!









Then it was time for my husband to get out his red pen. He is not a reader, but he found lots more mistakes at the beginning and less towards the end. I thought this was due to my writing skills improving :) But as I edited the book I found just as many mistakes in the last chapters as the first. He had got caught up in the story! Wow, that felt good.

With confidence boosted I took some deep breaths and managed to stop the re edit process and click the button for publish before I sterilised the story. I know that there will still be mistakes and part of me shudders and itches to correct them, but there has to come a point when you let your book take flight.

The only way to become a better writer is to write.
The only way to be a published author is to publish.

Will it be successful? I suppose that depends on your point of view of success -

Give the book away - 4 stars
Sell the book - 1 star
Personal growth and satisfaction - 5 stars
Sense of achievement - 5 stars
Achieved a life long dream - 5 stars

Looks successful to me :)


I am now enjoying writing the next in the series and ideas are flowing in for the third.