I was one of those that actually got a college degree in fiction writing and held onto a cozy notion that in-between a day job, I'd submit stories to journals and anthologies as a fun hobby. Unfortunately, my day job ended up beating the love of reading and writing out of me for several years. It wasn't until I started reading fanfiction that I rediscovered my own love of writing. While I do write main characters, I enjoyed creating fics featuring all original casts, or else putting a fantasy spin on the scify setting. Which led me to considering doing my own totally original works...

I am fortunate in that I knew a professional editor through another friend. We agreed to meet for coffee, and she gave me the run down on the writing/publishing process. Initially I had thought I'd pursue traditional publishing, but after in depth conversation with the editor, whom I'll call "K," I was more than a bit overwhelmed. While I knew publication wasn't just emailing a publication house my book, I never realized how in depth and daunting the querying process for an agent was, and all the other things that entailed. Likely seeing my wide-eyed look of shock, K had a suggestion for me: self-publish on Amazon.

K walked me through that process and given my own self-perceived feelings of still not being "good-enough" she advised I try to self-publish an original series first, build my skill and confidence, and then if I was still interested, circle back to traditional publication.

So that's what I did. First, I had to write the story; which was a journey of frustration in itself. I was lucky to have met the fabulous @squigglysquidd through fanfiction and she graciously offered to alpha read my chapters as I completed the first draft. Without her cheer-leading I might have given up.

After finishing a complete draft, I went over and fixed the glaring issues myself before handing the manuscript off to a beta reader. My beta reader happens to by a huge fantasy nerd and a trained editor of sorts, and while their concrit is sometimes very... lets say blunt... it's always great. After getting the book back from my beta, I overhauled it again with all their edits. Once I was confident that it wasn't a total turd, I contacted K again and hired her at her freelance rate to do a general edit of the manuscript. (Most freelance editors offer different services from general review to line edits, for my purposes general edits worked best). K was absolutely fantastic and taught me SO MUCH about writing and details and pacing ect. After I again overhauled the manuscript based on K's edits, I gave it over to a beta reader one more time for final critique. When it was returned I fixed any issues they identified and then began the painstaking line edits for any grammar issues.

While I have not used an empathy reader in my own works (yet) I did find a fabulous resource, fiverr, where you can hire empathy readers to review your work for areas where an author might unintentionally sound racially insensitive, ablest, ect.

So far as cover-art goes, I'd met an absolutely incredible artist through the Mass Effect fandom: @savbakk is the most talented land-mermaid of an artist and when I approached her about a commission for cover art, I hit the jack-pot when she agreed to do it. I adore her style and gaze fondly at the three book covers she's done in pure disbelief that she captured my characters so perfectly...

When my book is as polished as it can be, and I feel the narrative is tight and characters fleshed out with a solid plot, I self-publish on Amazon. It's a fairly straight-forward process, luckily.

I then marketed on Twitter and other social media platforms, with varying success. I was fortunate and my series was selected for a book club and I did an interview and gained some nice readership from that. I definitely could be better about marketing, but admittedly I get lazy after a while on that front.

And that’s my process in a nutshell. Eventually when I complete my fantasy series I’ll tackle traditional publishing. Until then, I’m enjoying myself and the experience. 😃

And that's my experience/process in a nutshell. I still have 2 more books planned for my series. I feel that I'm a stronger, better writer, with each story I complete. When my series is all finished, I will pursue traditional publication on my next project. Can't say I'll be successful, but I believe I'll be ready to try and enjoy the learning process.