The Fledgling Author

So I recently found a publisher for my paranormal romance, A New Day at Midnight. I'll give a shout out to Bookkus Publishing here for supporting my book!

How did this happen? Aside from a little luck, there's a lot of work that goes into building a workable fiction novel. Work I had no idea I'd be doing when I typed that first word on the page. Do you know that these three little dots ... are called an 'ellipse'? Well, neither did I. Strunk and White taught me many things about grammar and punctuation, with the exception of the occasional misplaced comma (perhaps it's more than occasional).

The internet has been my best friend. If I couldn't find out enough with a Google search, I just ordered the books that taught me about subjects in-depth. I researched the Romani people as well as myths and legends that were so obscure there was only one book at Amazon. I joined Book Country and Critique Circle so I could get feedback on my progressing work. Some critiques hurt, some didn't. Some were valid, some weren't. I weeded through it all and made mistakes along the way.

I always try to learn something from the other aspiring authors that have become my sounding boards and my friends. These were people that, when I could no longer take the blank stares of my family when I mentioned 'writer's block' and they could no longer listen to me whine about my inability to write a decent paragraph, I found other's that understood what I was going through. It's nice.

I think the greatest asset I have as a writer is to recognize I'll be learning for the rest of my life, trying to figure out the best way to write it down, the right spot to place the comma.

I write because I love it, because I truly love it. When I'm reading something I've written and I can feel what the character feels, see what they see, I know I'm doing exactly what I am meant to be doing. Corny maybe, but I want to share that with readers that love the characters as much as I do.

I can only hope A New Day at Midnight lives up to my aspirations.

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