Treespeaker goes out into the world

I’ve done it!

I’ve gone over to the dark side!
 
No, only joking, but I have done as I said I would do and published my book to Kindle. 

It was a really strange sensation pressing that button. What would happen? Was I condemning myself to instant ignominy, never to be read, lost into the ether forever? Or would I be read, liked and begged for more? Or somewhere in between? 

Of course, as soon as I’d pressed the button I remembered all sorts of things I should have done, like adding a biography of the author at the end and making sure every last word of italics was in italics (there’s a lot of ‘thoughtspeak’ in the novel, so that’s all in italics). But it’s up there now and already some lovely people have bought it. So that’s so many people who wouldn’t have read it otherwise.

If someone had told me this time last year that I would self-publish this year, I would have laughed. I have to admit I was rather cynical about the possibility of success with self-published work. Then I started reading success stories and did a bit of research and eventually changed my mind.

This is one of the thoughts that ran through my head during this change of heart: P and I waited for many years to have a child. At last I fell pregnant. All the time I was expecting Eldest, I dreamed of that magic moment when I would hear my child’s first cry and hold them in my arms for their first cuddle. It wasn’t to be. When it came to giving birth, everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I ended up having an emergency caesarean. P heard that first cry (and joined in, from all accounts) and he had the first cuddle. I heard nothing and my first cuddle didn’t happen until hours later when a sympathetic midwife managed to persuade the doctor that it wouldn’t hurt for the baby to be out of his humidicrib long enough for a feed.

What’s that got to do with self-publishing? Well, the truth is that Eldest didn’t seem real to me for months and I didn’t feel like a real mother. I loved him more than life, but because I hadn’t actually experienced his birth, I still kept expecting one of my sisters to turn up to take him home. In the same way, I’ve always thought that if I self-published, I wouldn’t be a real writer/author. I’d miss that moment of holding my book in my hand, knowing that I’d become a writer. But Eldest did become real to me and I did begin to feel like a real mother, so I’m hoping time will make me into a ‘real’ writer even if I’m self-published. That’s not to say I won’t still pursue the traditional channels, but for now, I’m content to let my book make its way into the world and find its own feet.

COMPETITION RESULTS

Many thanks to all those who gave me help choosing the cover for ‘Treespeaker’. As you can see, I ended up with number 3, with the stone and leaf reduced as someone suggested. Tonight I got Dynamo to choose a name out of a hat and the winner is …Rosemary. I’ll send you an Amazon gift voucher, Rosemary, via your email.

Thanks again, everyone!