How to Persevere: The Journey of a Self-Published Author
The tell-tale signs of what was to become on this journey began long ago during the 60’s as a little boy from being introduced to my first horror experience from the TV Series, “Dark Shadows.” This show really creeped me out which gave me nightmares and then I knew I was hooked. Then when I moved to Tennessee in 1972, I watched actors on my 19″ black and white TV in the horror genre such as Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Lon Chaney and Christopher Lee. Then as time went on and not swaying from being a fan of the old black and white horror movies my mind was further developing in the horror side of things as horror movies were adding color to the big screen. I had no idea that later on in life I would choose to be a writer.
After exploring writing music with another writer and watching my work get butchered and not feeling that the words written were all mine, I got discouraged even though I got two cuts from it. I tried once again at something else at inventing a board game that went nowhere because the companies wanted tens of thousands of dollars which I didn’t have so my proto-type went straight to the attic to be forgotten. But being the kind of person that is a dreamer I decided to give it one more try. Then one day as I was upstairs in my bonus room, I gazed through my movie collection and said to myself, “99 % of my movie collection is all horror.” Then a light bulb went off in my head and that’s when I decided right then and there, the genre I was going to write about was horror. The next step for any writer is coming up with a pen name that you hope will be a good one that is catchy and stand out to attract the readers especially whatever fits your genre. I chose Drac Von Stoller which represents a vampire.
Then you have to ask yourself the question what motivated you to become an indie author and not just only seek out to be a published author of a big publishing company?
I’m sure every indie author has been through what I’ve been through. First, you call publishers thinking you’ll get a book deal and the rest is history, think again, welcome to the real world. I called book stores and Wal Mart thinking it would be easy to get my book in stores, another brick wall. Then you say to yourself what am I going to do nobody wants me. Then depression hits and you just say what’s the use and give up. Or you can say to yourself there has to be a way to get my name out there and then you start looking on the internet and there it is companies like Smashwords, Amazon, iTunes and Google Play and Books and others that are willing to give indie authors a chance to succeed and I’m thankful I chose these companies and now the rest is history or so it seems.
The next step if your not a published author is to go the self-publishing way which is a long journey unless you’re willing to pay someone to edit your stories and upload your books to sites but then what’s the fun in it if you let someone do it for you. You can’t go look back someday and say I put in the long hard hours and say I did this all on my own.
Finally, you’re ready to start writing and let the magic begin. The best thing to do is write something short and let others read your work and if they like it then keep writing and upload your first story on the self-publishing websites and see what reviews you get and don’t stop because one thing is for sure it doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are the readers of your work will analyze and look for grammatical errors but don’t let them get you down because if you let them win you don’t want to find yourself saying “If only.”
