The Road was Not Always Easy
Writing a book was something that was never on my mind or my heart to do. For reasons unknown to me God placed me at the Hall of Fame when I applied there for the second time. It was there that I met John Voldstad who planted the seed in my mind and heart to write a book. For what felt like the first month or two he would never take my No as an answer and continued to push me to write my first book Dark Obsessions. The writing part of this journey was easy, something that I would have never imagined it to be. It was publishing that was the hardest to do.
Like so many new authors out there, I was preparing to self-publish my book with IngramSparks, a company that my cousin used when he published his children’s book. When I say I read everything on their website and watched almost every book I am not joking. I was preparing to do this and do it right so I needed to educate myself on all the ins and outs of self-publishing. I had a professional looking cover made, brought my own ISBNs and even got my own copyright done. I was on it and once again God blessed me with something that I would have never seen coming.
Dorrance Publishing saw that I had a book from the copyright that I had received and they reached out because they wanted to help me publish my book. I was over the moon because with them taking on more of the responsibilities I was free to be what I wanted to be, the author and nothing more. It is true that we will split the profits and they will get a bigger percent of that profit but 100% of nothing is nothing. I was excited to get my publishing journey underway and could not wait for the day that I got to hold my physical book in my hands.
Like everyone that signs on with Dorrance I was giving a project coordinator to be there for me every step of the way. The problem was he was not there. Emails went unanswered and I was never able to get any type of update from him. I took my concerns to the CEO when his assistant reached out to see how things were going. I was honest and expressed my frustrations and the next day I was assigned to a new project coordinator. Unlike the project coordinator that I had, my second one was ten times better. She gave me my timeline, and answered all of my questions. She was great and I was thankful for Dorrance for taking my concerns seriously and addressing them. Like before things took another turn for the worse. LIke y first project coordinator she too stopped responding and left me in the dark. Again I reached out to the CEO and let him know what was going on and after learning that she left the company I was given yet another project coordinator.
By this time I was thinking that I may have made a mistake and that was why other authors self-published. I was feeling like I was going to regret my decision and that was hard for me because doing this on my own just did not work for me so I pressed and things seemed to be looking up. My new project coordinator was on it and got my project back on track until it was time for my first copy to be shipped. Getting that first book created a feeling in me that I can not describe. I was on cloud nine and hit the ground running to start some promotion on my own when the unthinkable happened. I noticed that the ISBN on my book was a duplicate to another book that was not mine and already in print. A small issue turned out to be a huge issue and took almost five months to fix. I was a total wreck and the longer that the process went the more I tried to convince myself that this was not going to work. I was angry and upset and stopped all work on book two.
Again Dorrance came through and worked as quickly as they could to get the ISBN issue resolved and get me back to writing and loving it. The five months were long and hard and I believed that God directed me to write this book and as long as I stuck with it that things would work out in the end. The day that I found out that the issue was fixed I danced inside. Now I am once again working on promoting it with the hopes that I can and will be able to make this book become a huge success.
The moral of the story is no matter what the devil throws at you if it is God’s plan he will see you through. While Dark Obsessions may be dark in theme there is a very powerful message in it and while we all may have a little dark in us we all can overcome and learn a new way. I am so excited for the world to read this book and I know that if it is God’s will you all are going to love it as much if not more than I do. #WritingIsMyTherapy
