Whilst I’m sure MANY of you will already know this because I have been talking about it non stop on all my social media platforms, the paperback edition of my second novella ‘Baby Steps’ is out!
I figured it would be a good idea to pop a little blog post over here because that’s good marketing, right? The truth is, I’m terrible at my own marketing even though I do it as a job for other people… it’s insanity.
Anywho, if you’re interested in supporting my writing career you can do so here!
‘Baby Steps’ is the second instalment in The Fantasy Girl Series; a collection of novellas following Etta, a young girl in early 1930’s America, who discovers her world is full of witches and demons, mystery and danger.
The series is young adult and honestly such a fun passion project of mine! Whilst I’m working on getting a deal with an agent/ publishing house for full length novels, writing shorter stories for self publishing is a fun way to dip my toe into getting my work seen and getting over that awful stage of not wanting people to read your writing; which is a very real stage of the process when you’re first starting out. Self publishing also gives you a great insight into what it takes to get a book ready for print; it’s laborious and there are a lot of back and forths. I was so thankful when a friend of mine, Ines, started formatting freelance because she took most of the brunt of the annoying part of the work, which is sorting out page margins, text size, line height, etc. etc. Basically without formatting you just end up with a book of nonsense.
I’m dyslexic which means sometimes it’s hard for me to spot not only grammar mistakes but also details that might need more attention; my brain kind of skims over words a lot and looking at the same document for a while often leads to mental fatigue and frustration, especially when the words start to not totally make sense to me so having someone else do all of that was a lifesaver!
At the end of all of the work I’ve come away with not only a better understanding of the process but a great final product – I love the book so much and I’m so excited to release the next step in the journey early next year. Until then I’m working on getting another series off the ground which is even more work but I love being busy! That’s basically why this blog has been so quiet recently!
As always, I really appreciate you and anyone who buys, reads, and reviews my books! It might not seem like much but every one of those things takes me one step closer to doing this as a career… where I actually make money!
Until next time!
Sam
Pretty Thoughtful Blog 