booksandstories.com

November 2005 Review

Writing Progress (or not)

I decided to submit the second part of “The Friendly Ambassador,” “The Friendly Ambassador: A Gathering of Angels” to PublishAmerica. They have now accepted the book and I am back on the production stages that lead to its publication, probably next year. They may have a fast track system but I don't know about that yet, so I assume it will be late next year. I think the reason for my decision is based on the knowledge that having the book published, even if it doesn't sell a lot of copies, places it in the public eye and locks in the copyright. It gets an ISBN number, anyone can order it, and it exists in a physical form that you can see and feel. Anyway, that's my excuse, because I certainly don't make a lot of money out of it!

As with the first part of “The Friendly Ambassador,” I have created my own cover art for the book. I am getting quite a hang of DazStudio which is the 3D software that I use. Hopefully PublishAmerica will use the covers as they did before. Now that I have a few images I might put them up on this site for you to look at.

If all goes well and I get the entire set of “The Friendly Ambassador” published, I think I will follow it up with “A Fine Woman,” “The Look of Love,” “The Dreamer,” and “An Affair of the Heart.” These are probably my best stories so it would be nice to see them in book form. Obviously this will take a fair while, as it takes roughly a year to get each book published, if PublishAmerica takes them all. Do I have any worries about my chosen publisher? Not really, and nobody else has taken any interest.

PublishAmerica is for the small and unknown writers out there. They do a fair job and produce good quality books from what I have seen of the books they sent to me and that I ordered from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I am a small and unknown writer, I may never be anymore than that, so for me, PublishAmerica provides a good service with no cost to me, and I get to be involved with the cover design. That means the whole book, from cover to cover is my artistic domain. That can't be bad.

It is a lot easier to send off a book than to send off sample chapters and stuff to film companies, people or agents. I have done this a couple of times now, and although I haven't been any more successful than I have been before, it is easier. I also think the finished book looks better, they get the whole thing in a smaller package, and if they send it back I can reuse it.

And you know what, I like keeping them on my desk, looking at them, browsing through them, reading familiar texts and knowing that they are mine.