I started writing really before I could read, making up stories and then trying to type them on my father's typewriter with dismal results. Learning to read and then to write opened up vast worlds for me, those others had created and the ones I created in my own head. I wrote my first novel when I was ten and often rushed through homework after school to be able to get on with writing.

   A degree in English and Latin had a sobering effect and I didn't write anything creative for a couple of years after graduation. Later, with snow on the ground, a restless new baby in the next room and an unheated house, I wrote a short story that later became the novel which led me into the no-man's land of the world between writing and being published. I stayed there for years, getting encouragement from publishers and agents who liked my work a lot but who could never find the right “slot” for it and so kept rejecting my books. I languished at committee stage where a board of editors and readers discussed the current project before again rejecting it. A serious and sudden illness made me question the point of putting myself through so much stress and the writing just stopped, dead in the water.

   Eight years passed. Life moved on. I thought I was done with writing. But one morning, like a persistent lover who won't take “No” for an answer it came back and took over. The same no-man's land was waiting. This time, I was picked up and then dropped by agents too. Close, but no cigar.

   A total relocation shook things up and a change of day-job and different stresses brought me to the blog world, where I realised some ideas that had been brewing for a while were maybe possible. An old friend and a new one encouraged me to think about the concept of self-publishing, something I had previously equated with the old vanity publishing industry. I looked and began to think that I had been wrong about it. My whole impression of the publishing industry had been based on a neediness and the belief that I needed them, a belief the industry fosters.

   The mid-list fiction, that area between the best-sellers and the small specialist books is in heavy decline. I'd been told this by my contacts in the publishing industry but I'd not really taken in what it meant. It means that if your book is unlikely(for whatever reason) not to become a best-seller then the list that existed in previous eras is much smaller and has far fewer slots left. In essence, this means most books by unknown authors are competing for these few small spaces. You have a better chance of winning the lottery.

So with a lot of help from my friends, I set out to publish my own work. We're learning as we go along. We're making mistakes. But that's good. It's our authentic journey into finding a new way of publishing and of reaching people with books. A mistake is only a mistake if you keep doing something when you know it doesn't work.

Join us on our journey. It might help you with yours.

For the full unedited version go HERE