Never Give Up On Your
Dreams
by Christine Kersey
I love to read and lose myself in a good story – forget all
that is going on around me and be in
the story with the characters. One day in 1997 I finished reading a novel by
Joy Fielding and realized she hadn’t needed to be an expert in a particular
field, like medicine or law, to write a good suspense story. This fact inspired
me to try my hand at writing. It also didn’t hurt that we’d just gotten our
first computer and I can type much faster than I can write longhand.
At this time in my life I was thirty-two and my youngest
child was three. I also had three other children who were in elementary school.
A stay-at-home mom, I was able to carve out some time to work on this project.
At first I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. What if I couldn’t complete it?
What if I failed? After a short time I told my husband, mother, and sister and
they were supportive.
I kept working at it, day by day, until after about four
weeks I’d finished a complete novel. At that point it was nowhere near ready to
be published, but I’d proven to myself that I could write a novel with a
beginning, middle, and end. I continued working on the story, then put it aside
and began working on another.
I gathered the courage to have a few friends read it and
they all said they loved it. Encouraged, I decided to attend a conference called
Bouchercon , which is for fans of mysteries. At the conference I mingled with
published writers and talked to an agent or two. Afterwards I sent queries to
several agents, but none of them were interested in my completed novel.
Shortly afterwards I started working part-time and didn’t
spend as much time writing as I had before. When my youngest child started
first grade I decided to go back to college full-time and earn my degree. Over
the next four years I did very little fiction writing and focused on getting my
education.
As I approached my final semester my schedule wasn’t quite
as heavy and I decided to do some revisions on one of my two completed novels.
When I felt the story was ready, I submitted it to a small, regional publisher.
In April, 2004 I graduated with a B.S. in Information Technology. That same
week the publisher got back to me and said they were interested in publishing
my book, but first they wanted me to do revisions. Though they hadn’t offered a
contract yet, I did the revisions and resubmitted the manuscript. They were
pleased, but wanted yet more revisions. In 2004 the job market was down and I
was spending a lot of time job-hunting, but I did the revisions as requested.
In October of that year I finally found a full-time position
and within two weeks of starting my new job, the publisher got back to me and
offered a contract. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Seven and a half years
after I’d written my first book and I was finally getting published!
I was assigned an editor and worked closely with her. The
book hit bookstores in July, 2005. I thought I was on my way. I had one book
published with a real publisher, so now I was set, right?
The book sold reasonably well, but when I submitted another
manuscript, my publisher decided not to publish it. Discouraged, I focused on
my family and my job and didn’t spend very much time writing. However, I still
read as much as ever. In fact, when the nook eReader became available I bought
one and started loading dozens of books onto it. I was in reader heaven.
I’d had my nook for nearly a year before I caught on to the
possibilities indie publishing presented. The book I’d published with a
traditional publisher had gone out of print and I was able to get the rights
back. That book, No Way Out, was the
first book I made available as an indie publisher. The first month it was
available I sold exactly one copy. But that one sale was very exciting. Since
then I’ve published three more novels and have sold thousands of copies. I love
that I have complete control over what I publish. I also love to read the work
of other indie authors. There are so many talented people that are now able to
publish their work.
I’m glad I didn’t give up on my dream to be published and am
so excited at the endless opportunities that are now available. One thing I’ve
learned is that if you persist in following your dreams, eventually you will be
able to accomplish what you’ve set out to do, whatever it may be.
That three-year-old child that sat near me as I began my
writing career is now a senior in high school. Whether or not I had chosen to
continue writing, time inexorably moved forward. It’s never too late to follow
your dreams, but why wait?
Visit my blog
He Loves Me Not is
currently only available at Amazon,
although if you have a nook, email me and I’ll send you a free epub copy.
Don’t Look Back is
the sequel to He Loves Me Not and is
available at Amazon
as well as Barnes
& Noble.
No comments:
Post a Comment