#self-publshing

subtitled: how and why I ended up self-publishing when I swore I'd never do it.

UNDYING: The book that wouldn't leave me alone.

So here's what happened. I wrote this book 2+ years ago. And, you know. That can be kind of a big deal, I guess. I wrote 50,000 words of it during NaNoWriMo in 2010, and then wrote more after that.

In 2011, I submitted it to Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Not because I thought it would win, but because I felt my betas were being too nice about it. I was hoping to get it in front of the Vine reviewers and get some good feedback and I could edit it more.

Of course, then it made it to the quarterfinals, and I had a lovely, if not giddy, Publishers' Weekly review.

The problem was, I knew it wasn't right, and I ripped out over half the book and started over. When I had it all done, I started querying agents. And figured it would be a slam dunk. I mean, I had a lot of full requests (this is A Good Thing, for those of you unfamiliar with this process).

Trouble was, none of them wanted to represent it. I had one agent who sent a rejection that made even crocodile-thick-skinned me sob into my Corn Flakes, but later I did see that meant she was SUPER invested in what happened to the characters, and they didn't do what she wanted them to. I fixed some of the things I felt she was right about, and left others I thought she was wrong about.

But everyone else? Nothing. There was never anything they told me that I'd be able to fix. One said it was good but wasn't "big" enough for a debut. Which I appreciated, but now there's a new release that has a VERY VERY similar plot that's going to be a bestseller this week and is going to be a TV series.

Which makes my book unrepresentable.

I mean, my book is different. There's no apocalypse. This is a sweet little book that focuses on people. Just one couple. And there's more of this story in my head, but that whole story is a dead end if the first book just sits on my hard drive. So I had a choice: sit here and stew in my pity party of one, or put my book out there and hopefully make a few bucks.

But seriously. This isn't my first rodeo. I've written other books in other NanNoWriMos. Some I recycled into fan fiction. Some sit on my hard drive, languishing away. But this one was special and I really felt something about it and I wanted it to have its day, even if it's a very small day.

I'm okay with that.

And hey, Petey needs two new pairs of dance shoes.

No pressure, but if this sounds interesting, and you want to at least read the blurb, thank you. You don't have to buy it. You can download a sample if you just want to see if I can use apostrophes correctly. (The answer, BTW, is yes).