I normally don’t discuss my day job on the blog (if ever) but today is an exception. We hosted an art day at the store and brought in young adult writer, Jennifer Dugan, and comic artist, Ryan Butt, to interact with customers and advertise their work.
Obviously purchases were made and after some encouragement from my friend, I got over enough of my initial embarrassment to talk to Jennifer about her experience with publishing both traditionally and independently. While there were things I knew based off my own research, her insight to hybrid publishing and how that might influence the decisions of well-known publishing houses depending how said indie book sold was information I didn’t consider when plotting my own career course. It’s one thing to read about self publishing and hearing someone’s first hand experience. She was honest about the pros and cons of both and gave her advice easily.
The piece of advice that settled my worries and set my resolve however, was the one were I simply ‘went with what felt right for my story.’
I’ve always planned for “Others That Mother” to be self publish or pitched to a small, niche publisher, while going going traditional with “Rooks n’ Guns.” These choices felt as satisfying as the first time I made them. So I’ll continue on as I have. There’s much work to be done and words to be written. And for the first time in several years, I’m excited for all the stories I have planned.
But I definitely should working on expressing what kind of stories these are when people ask.
.chel
Reading Rites 