Book Update

I know it's been a while since I've written one of these posts. I've had both a lot and very little going on at the same time. I felt like it was well beyond time to give an update on what's going on with my book though.

The whole thing with the crowd funding campaign to self-publish my book being run through my stream didn't quite work the way I had intended it to. That's fine. I probably didn't do as good of a job setting it up or advertising it the way that I should have. That might be for the best though. I guess we'll see.

The reason that I think it might be for the best in the long run is because I found a small press indie publisher named Win's Books Publishing (https://www.winsbookspublishing.com/). When I first submitted my book to them I didn't recognize that I needed to put my contact information on the cover page. That probably should have been something that was obvious to me, but it's something that I didn't figure out until about three weeks after I had already submitted it.

So...I submitted it again. No harm, no foul right? This time I even made sure with them through email that my submission had everything that it needed to have for it to be able to be considered. That submission was made five weeks ago. According to their form response they usually have a six to eight week turnaround on giving replies. So that means that I should be getting a response from them in one to three weeks. That is both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Now I have a road map. I know what I am trying to do. Ideal scenario is that I get an email from them in one - three weeks saying that they have decided to publish my book. Woohoo!!! Yippee!!! That would be amazing. Less than ideal situation is that they decide that it's either not a good fit for them or that it's just not ready to be published yet. Either way, I am also prepared to face that scenario.

Win's Books Publishing appears to be a really cool company. It's a publishing firm that is run by a woman of color, and not only do they offer traditional publishing, but they also offer a hybrid publishing package. I have decided that if they do not decide to traditionally publish my novel that I would still like to publish through them using their hybrid publishing model.

If it comes down to going with the hybrid publishing model then I will have to do a crowd funding campaign. I just don't have the expendable funds to be able to fund a venture like that without some support. If that happens then I'll be smarter this time. I will do it through a notable crown funding platform such as Kickstarter and I will put so much more effort into it than I did into the campaign that I was trying to run through my stream.

I'm also considering starting a Patreon as well as a paid subscription on Substack. One of the key plot points of Rediscovering Reality is that Tom, my protagonist, is a blogger that started writing his blog because his therapist recommended that he do so as a coping mechanism. The novel starts twenty-nine years after he first started writing the blog.

That gives me a lot of material to work with. So what my Patreon members and Substack subscribers will receive are blogs written from the POV of my protagonist that will give them backstory from the beginning of his blog to the starting point of the book. I'll more than likely throw out a few free posts to get people interested, and see where it goes from there. Even if it doesn't make any money towards publishing the book, it will still hopefully be a good way to build interest.

I've started writing another book. This is a book idea that I've had in my head since high school, but I never really was able to figure out what the end of it should be. It's going to be a Paranormal Murder Mystery novel. I originally thought that it was going to be a Horror novel, but the more I dig into planning out what the plot is going to be, the more I realize that it's probably more Paranormal Murder Mystery than it is Horror.

So that's where things are at the moment. It's mainly a lot of sitting and waiting. I'm waiting to find out whether or not Win's Books Publishing is going to publish Rediscovering Reality or not. If they don't then we're going to do a crowd funding campaign. I'm going to start writing blog post from the POV of my Rediscovering Reality protagonist whether or not they decide to publish it. I have also started my next novel and I'm currently about 2,000 words into it. Just at the beginning, but I can see a fairly clear vision of where I want to go with it.

Here's my next 3 novels in no particular order

• Black Iris (The Paranormal Murder Mystery that I've already started so I guess this is in the correct order)

• Dirk Dashing and the 35th Universe (SciFi LitRPG that is a spin off of Rediscovering Reality.)

• Welcome to Zombie Con (Very campy zombie horror)

I'm going to try to get into writing these more frequently. Especially now that I'm trying to build more interest around Rediscovering Reality. The more I can show that I have a market that's interested in the book, the easier it will be for me to get it published.

Thanks everybody! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.