My Journey Into Self Publishing Captured Lies

I wrote Captured Lies many years ago. I had originally written it as a romance. I truly thought that was how you were supposed to break into being published. Some of the authors—Sandra Brown, Jayne Anne Krentz, Nora Roberts…—that I enjoyed started their writing and publishing career, so I’m assuming that’s where it came from? I’m not sure but I knew I really liked the story I had written I just wanted it to be a suspense/thriller. That was what I was into reading and wanted to know if I could write one… although I truly wasn’t sure.

Anyway in late 2010, I decided that I wanted my novel to be published, so I ripped it apart and rewrote it. I totally changed it up so that it was no longer a romance, although a tiny part of that stayed, and wrote it as the suspense/thriller I wanted it to be. Then sent it off to a traditional publisher. I think my fingernails were still attached (figuratively at least). Wow was that hard to do. That fear of not being good enough, not being interesting… Anyway I had sent it so it was too late. Gulp!

And then I waited… and waited… and waited… Which was a good thing because the nerves started going away and the annoyance started creeping in. Finally I emailed, yes they’d received it and it was in the slush pile—that didn’t sound very promising. Then at 6 months I emailed again, my story was next on the list. When I hadn’t heard back at 10 months I emailed them again. Yes, they were interested, yada-yada but… it would be another 2 years until it was published. That was all I got out of it.

What! I was ready to be published now. It taken a lot of nerve to send them my book and now I had to wait. I’m a doer so when I see something that needs done, I do it and get it done. Waiting I don’t think is my strong suit. I thought about it for a short period of time and then I pulled my novel from the publisher, it was one of the big six. Had I made a mistake?

I knew nothing about what I was doing. I went online and figured out how to convert my book into an ebook, how to upload to Amazon, Kobo and use an aggregate for the other ebook sellers. It was so much work and stress. Thankfully some wonderful authors gave me some tips and guidance as to things I needed to do… like marketing. Marketing? Don’t I just have to publish my book and people will find it?

Nope. It doesn’t work that way. But we won’t talk about marketing today, we’re going to talk about taking that leap.

If I hadn’t taken the leap and published Captured Lies, even though I knew it wasn’t quite ready—it needed more editing—I would not have 5 books published with my six coming out. I wouldn’t have written 20 books. I would not have gone back and had Captured Lies fully re-edited, a new cover created and published it in paperback.

I would not be where I’m at and able to take my love of writing and teach other women how to get over the hurdles holding them back, if I hadn’t jumped. I made a lot of mistakes. I’ve had lots of positive and some negative comments along the way. I learned that I could decide to let the negative beat me up or I could see if I could learn from it and get better and move forward or stop.

I am so excited to finally be at this stage of my writing career.

I just received my 100th review on Captured Lies and I have a 4.4/5 rating on Amazon.

This is the new version of Captured Lies which is now out in paperback.

I started out just like you, interested in writing, wanting to write but not really having a clue how to go about and make it interesting or something that others would want to read.

One of my goals is to make sure that you don’t make as many mistakes as I do and to provide you support and guidance to keep going.

Write, be brave… the journey is worth it.

Where do you want to be with your writing? Are you writing for yourself? Do you want to share your story with others? Family? Friends? or do you want to publish it and put it out to the world?

It really doesn’t matter, what matters is that you write, it truly is the only way to get better at it.