Welcome to me

Welcome to my author blog! I already have a personal blog, but Writing in my Head is a blog I am keeping strictly with regards to my writing and publishing.

In 2008-2009, I wrote a novel. When I was finished, I started querying it - for those of you who are not in the writing industry, it means sending letters to agents, in the hopes that they will want to represent you. If they take you on as a client, they try to get you a contract with publishers. If they can do that, your book gets published by a publisher and may end up in bookstores. The publishers may help you publicize your book, though some of that will still be in your own hands. It depends how much of a big seller they think your book is going to be.

Quite a few agents were interested enough in the premise of my novel (which was originally called Silent Night, Unholy Night, then Some Things are Universal, now Secrets of a Summer Village), and asked to see the entire manuscript. None of them offered representation. So I decided to take a break from my novel, think about it, and edit it. 2010 wasn't such a great year for me, and I couldn't even think about looking at my novel, but once 2011 rolled around, I was ready to revisit it.

So, I read it again. And I really liked it. "Wow, I wrote some pretty good stuff!" I thought. So I edited it from start to finish and started querying again. In the nearly two years since I had queried the first time, the industry had already changed a lot. For one thing, lots of agents now ask for up to 3 chapters of your book along with the query letter, so you don't have the immediate satisfaction of the quick requests for writing samples. After receiving a few rejections, I decided to re-investigate self-publishing.

I hadn't been too interested in self-publishing electronically in the past because I'm old enough to still want paper books. Electronic books are not enough for me. Maybe I'll own a Kindle or a Nook or something one day, but I don't yet. I think they're great, but I don't particularly want one. And for me, if my book is only electronic, it's not published. I need a paper copy. That said, there's more earning potential (for authors) from the electronic version.... Still, even print-on-demand self-published books have come a long way in two years, both in quality and in price.

So I'm going to go for it. Self-publishing requires the author to wear a lot of hats - writer, editor, cover designer, publicist, etc..., but I think it's worth a try. Here I go...

I'll post about self-publishing as I get further along in the process, and will share my book cover and so forth with you. I'll also let you know when my book is available, and from where!