Amazon.com, Here I Come!

You know, I never really thought in my wildest dreams that anything I wrote would ever be published. Sure, there's these sporadic blog postings that I do, but in the three years that I have participated in National Novel Writing Month and its' sister writing challenge, Script Frenzy, I never once believed that I would actually get over whatever anxiety and lack of confidence I had regarding my writing and actually put a finished work out to the public masses. That is about to change.

This past November, I penned a literary adventure featuring my Toronto detective main character where he was planning on taking a short vacation to attend a fan convention in town. Of course, if I left it just at that, it would make for a pretty dull story. However, while at the convention, a situation arises and the festivities turns into a hostage situation, with my MC stuck within the fracas. During the situation, he keeps his partner at the Police Division posted of the developments while he seeks advice from an acquaintance he met on a previous case that's attending the convention too, and gets "spiritual" guidance from the ghost of his long-departed fiancee. It may seem a little far-fetched, but I believed it was a solid story. But the question was, did I want to leave this as is, or did I want to take the next step?

In the 5-1/2 months that followed, I would ask for a couple of friends to help go over it and see if there was any tweaking I could do. Unfortunately, they both ended up being dead ends. With a promotional code for self-publishing due to expire at the end of June, I said to myself, "Like the adage goes, 'If you want something done, do it yourself.'" That's exactly what I ended up doing. I began to go through my novel with a fine-toothed comb; suggesting revisions be made, filling possible plot holes, and just polishing my story so that it could actually pass as something that's not an amateur train wreck. I finished typing out the revisions yesterday, and after a couple of cosmetic tweaks to make it look a little more professional looking, I have sent it off to the self-publishing house for review.

During the process, I set myself a personal goal of having my novel available for sale on August 20th of this year; however, I do have the option of moving the release date up a good couple of months. Soon, my little work of fiction will be able to sale to the masses on amazon.com and my ambition of being a published novelist will come into fruition. Admittedly, I'm both nervous and excited at the same time. I'm not sure how well it will sell, but at least I can say to myself that I got over that hump and I did it.

Now, to finish the final planning before I start writing the second novel in the series a fortnight from now.

Until next time, the views may be from the outside, but soon you'll be able to see me listed as an author.

P.S. Buy a copy of "Scarlet Siege" when it does become available, please?