Hey, my book’s on Goodreads! That’s pretty cool, right? My imposter syndrome says no, but everything else says yes. It’s more bizarre external validation, the kind of thing I know is real but feels fake. That’s not a terribly poor metaphor for this entire process, from writing itself to rolling forward with a progressively more complex plan to self-publish. What a ride that’s been.
My decision to self-publish the Freedom and Control series was made from a combination of practicality and sentimentality. At the time of writing the first book, I was still in college. My career path was shifting, my future was still unclear, and the stability to undertake a concerted effort at getting the first novel traditionally published was simply not there. It’s a long process, one I do hope to undertake with future projects (and there are plenty of those), but not one that looked particularly appealing at the time.
What was more, the book at the time was not one I felt ready to go out and try to get published traditionally. In one form or another, I’ve been casually writing for a long time. First on my own, drawing little stories, then for a while a giant FanFiction career (that we’re NOT ready to unpack because I wound up deadfic-ing my fans and uh, they will come for me), and then numerous NaNoWriMo runs. A Place I Have Never Been, at first just a document titled “Eilatek” was one of those runs. Telgora as a concept runs a lot longer in my imagination. Suffice to say that it certainly was no longer about a kid named Mark who goes to a dragon-riding school (but hey, look at what concepts were there from the beginning.) But it also wasn’t a (very) on the nose story with (mostly) irrational characters, (stupidly) complicated names, and kind of messy timescale, and I loved it. By the end of the six years of edits and rewrites, I loved what it had become, and what it could be. I am only as happy with the end result as any writer is with any of their works (there’s an applicable Dorothy Parker quote out there somewhere, I just know it). So the decision to self-publish grew from my love of how the story stood, even with the acknowledgement of the limitations the work would inherently possess.
We’re running out of time, you know.
The majority of my beta-readers agree on a general theme when reading and editing A Place I Have Never Been: that it gets better the further in you get. That’s because, legitimately, I become a stronger writer as the story grew. Editing and releasing the story in parts contributed to this as well, a decision made in part to relieve the schedule on my beta readers (another fun limitation of self-publishing), and to relieve my own schedule. 40-50k word sections are easier to parse than the entire 150k or so novel, and easier to manage while working and living (as much as any of us have really been living in the age of COVID).
Whether or not A Place I Have Never Been’s sequel will be published in parts or in its entirety remains to be seen. All the reasons above are compelling, but the actual product now sits in its entirety out with betas for notes and eventual rewrites. If it works better as a whole, it may be released as a whole. But that’s a decision I get to make, because I self-published.
That’s kind of cool. It’s also part of the fun of self-publishing (a process no less complicated or lengthy than traditional publishing, as I soon learned, and that’s before discussing expenses (and setting up a company and all the fun of ISBNs)). It was the kind of personal challenge that seemed (and has been) fun! Complete control (for better and worse), creative evolution (what do I know about designing book covers?), and the pure passion a work embodies when it has the full liberty to be whatever its creator wants it to be.
I never set out to make money from these books, and I can tell you that I definitely am running this website and my company at a loss. But what I can tell you is that my book’s now on Goodreads, and Amazon, and that my parents own a copy, and that I keep forgetting to actually order one for myself. This website has evolved from a purely literary focus to host poetry, my photography (needs updating), and this blog (not something I actually considered doing regularly.) From A Place I Have Never Been’s inception to here, the work that has gone in has only encouraged more creation, more inspiration, and more growth. That was more the point than anything else, and with so many more projects on the way, I’m happy that the first big creative endeavor of my life exists as it does: independent, and getting better as it goes along.
I am, too.
Here’s a poem to that effect:
“Playing God”
In the beginning, I said:
“Let there be words!”
And words appeared.
But the words lacked focus,
And the words lacked form.
So, I said:
“Let there be characters!”
And a girl appeared.
She was around my age, and a little taller than me,
And her eyes spoke of pain and determination.
Then a man appeared, standing next to her with
A drink in one hand and fire in another.
And then another man, standing farther from them both,
Eyeing them each with suspicion.
And then a woman
Unsure of where to stand.
They looked at one another, and then at me, confused,
Wondering why they should be called into this blank page of a world.
So, I said:
“Let there be setting!
Let there be trees, and buildings, and plains, and oceans, and roads connecting
all the corners of this world
I am making
For them to run in,
For them to love in,
For them to fight in,
And live in.”
Then, I said:
“Let there be plot!
Let them run,
Let them love,
Let them fight,
Let them live!”
And it was so.
They ran to each other,
They loved each other,
They fought each other.
They lived full lives upon a page no longer blank,
A page that would never be blank again,
A world that lived as long as they lived,
Experiencing it,
Dancing through sentences,
Parading through paragraphs,
Whispering through others’ chapters,
Waiting for their time to shine.
Then, I said:
“Let there be edits!”
And the world cracked away.
Oceans swept back into whiteness,
Mountains crumbled at pen strokes.
Lives rewritten, not knowing
That they would live again, and
Again, and again.
I created and destroyed their worlds.
Their lives.
Then I said:
“Let there be a book!”
And breathed an eternal life into their world.
I watched it live, no longer on a single page
But on dozens!
On hundreds!
Pages held in the hands of others,
Others who would picture them differently,
Who’d live their lives differently,
Who’d see my world, my characters, my story
In ways I could never see them myself.
And so it was.
And now it is.
My world is real,
Not just to me
But to everyone.
And now, I say:
“Let there be readers!
Let my characters live
A hundred lives
In a hundred minds
On a hundred worlds
That I could never create.
Let them inspire others
To run,
To love,
To fight,
To live!
But most of all,
Let them inspire others,
As all the worlds and lives I’ve lived
In all the stories I’ve listened to,
And in all the books I’ve read,
Inspired me,
To create!”