Good day all, how are you today? For todays post I am talking about the first book from birth to the release.
For starters I will first say that the idea for the book came to me when I was living in Halifax. I believe it was the summer of 2003 when I started putting the ideas for the book down on paper. As I started to get the ideas sorted into chapters which came in the fall of that year I was able to get a couple chapters written. The name of the book was going to be An Individual's Innocence and I was not planning for it to be a series, that idea came after 2005.
At the time when I was starting the work on the book, I was busy with my career as a chef which did not give me much time to get anything real time to write. It was a hobby at that time and the idea of being published was not even a dream. I just wanted to write something to see if I could write a book.
By the time that 2004 started for me, I had stopped working so I could focus on my schooling that I was taking. That opened up time for me to write. I was still working on the plot of the book and I had the problem of not knowing where or how to end the book. Much less the next chapter to follow. I found out how hard it was to write a book in the first year that I had put into it and I was not even half way through. Then I got sick.
When I was in the hospital, the idea of making the book about mental illness came to me. I spent many days in the activity room putting down ideas for the updated book. It would not be until later 2005 when I started to really work on it. I had moved home and I was working nights at the local restaurant and getting off at midnight. Most nights I would put in an hour or two into writing.
Then I started to drink and I stopped writing for almost 5 years until I got sober in 2010. That was when I picked up the book again and I started fresh. I kept the general idea I had and it was something that kept me sober as it was my outlet for staying sober. It would not be for another 3 years until I had a finished draft to work on and decided on making it a 3 book series. I took the time in doing the editing and a friend also was helping me on that side of things. There was a bit of a rewrite as there was a scene that I had put in the middle of the book which did not fit. It was then moved to the first chapter after a little work.
In 2015 I started to look for a publisher and found one in Victoria, BC, Canada. I was looking forward the next step of being published, however I was overwhelmed with what I was going to do. The feelings that I had was more of fearing of what people would think of the book and me as an author. When I started the publishing process I knew that there was no turning back and I had to make peace with my fears that I had.
In October 2016 the first book of the series was released, An Individual's Innocence : The Silent Screams was available online. Since then I have the second book of the series out and the last book is in the editing phase.
Through the writing process of this series I have learnt so much about me and who I am and what I can achieve when I put up a goal to reach.
Next week I will talk about the things that I enjoy doing other than writing books. Feel free to leave feedback or any question that you would like me to talk about. Stay safe.
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