I have been pursuing my writing seriously since high school, dreaming of the day when I would become a published author. For the past many years, I've worked part time hours to allow for more writing time, and have worked hard to prepare my work for publication. I completed my first book in 2018, but decided to shelf it after a brief stint of querying. I turned my attention to When Shadows Fall, which I spent the next three years working on.
Though I had always intended to traditionally publish my work, a bit of soul-searching at the beginning of 2022 caused me to reconsider my goals. While traditional publishing comes with a lot of advantages, it is also more restrictive than self-publishing, allowing far less creative control in areas such as cover art, release dates, content, and publication of sequels. Due to my fading trust in the publishing industry and my desire to stay true to my creative vision, I made the call to pursue self-publishing instead.
I spent over a year learning what I could about the process and preparing my book for publication, including things like hiring an editor, commissioning cover art, formatting the book, creating front and back matter, and assembling marketing materials. Finally, on June 5th, 2023, I released my debut novel, When Shadows Fall.
I spent the rest of the year promoting my book and working on the sequels. It made for a busy year, and when going through my writing logbook, I was pleased to see how much I accomplished! In total, I spent over 735 hours in 2023 pursuing my writing career. That included approximately:
70 hours of additional editing/proofreading of When Shadows Fall
165 hours spent working on book 2
76 hours working on book 3 (and about 150,000 words!)
72 hours of brainstorming for the series
over 340 hours of miscellaneous self-publishing and marketing work
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