Thus It Begins

One of the first thing that an author discovers is that the writing of a book is only the beginning. It would be lovely to think that you could spend all of your time writing, devoting every waking moment to the perfecting of your craft, but that is rather unlikely if you’re an independent author and have to contend with the realities of what goes into getting a book from the screen to the marketplace. In my case, from my laptop to both Amazon and Kobo.

Another thing that an author discovers is that writing is not something you turn on or off; writing is something that is part of you, whatever you do it makes you think of your writing, or of something you might write about, and that is good. This means that the prescient author is being aware of their surroundings, aware of their thoughts and feelings, and all of the ideas swirling around in their head. One of the best things that have aided in focusing my own creativity during the writing of the first three books of the Felis Alliance Series has been the taking of regular long walks.

Doing this daily not only allows my eyes to not only take a break from staring at the monitor, it allows my brain to sort out the various characters that are being juggled in the book that is being written. Plots have been adjusted and story lines have been completely revamped by the time the walk has ended. More importantly, in over two years the words “writers block” have never been used in conjunction with the phrase “I have”, which is a good thing, to say the least.

Once the first book of the Felis Alliance had been completed it would have been great to hand it off to someone else to prepare it for publication, but independent authors do not have that luxury. Bordofsky Productions is a small operation. There is an in-house editor, who was of great assistance, but even with Patrice’s assistance, much of the work fell to the shoulders of the author. That meant revising the book, and proofreading, before more writing. Patrice checked the work, and suggested corrections, and then the work continued. Something that an author should learn, however, is that revising their writing is a good thing to do. If you let someone else revise your work, how much of your work is it in the end? If you write it and you revise it, it is yours. From beginning to end, you have created every word, every nuance, and everything that the reader sees on the page—or screen as the case may be.

In the case of the first book, Sun Killers, my thoughts had been that the editing process was taking too long, and then it occurred to me that it was taking as long as it needed to take. What was the rush? Writing, as with any creative process is just that: it’s a process. It requires time, a gestation period. Putting the words on the page is merely the beginning. We’ve all read things that could have benefited from a good proofread, and edit, but was obviously rushed to publication. There are many reasons for this, but the most common is money. Publishers often make cuts in their Editorial Departments, and quality suffers. This is unfortunate, particularly when you end up reading things in a newspaper, magazine, or book, and find unfortunate errors that could have—or should have—been picked up with a cursory proofread, but in the rush to get something to press, it was missed.

Now that Sun Killers has “gone live” and is available for purchase on both Amazon on Kobo (please check out the links below to get your copy today), it is, as they say, as real as it gets, and the pressure is on to get the second book prepared for release. Books two and three have been written, and right now Time Changers, book two of the series, has been fully revised and edited, and is now undergoing the final proofread before it is sent to market, but that is not a process that takes just a few days. At the moment, my creative time is being divided between the final proofreading and the writing of book four, Inevitability, as well as spending some time every day working on marketing Sun Killers.

It seems as though there is a never-ending amount of work, and at any given time one could spend an entire day on one thing, neglecting something else. Believe me, that has happened … though not usually in favor of the marketing. As much as it is my desire to see Sun Killers become a wild success, “selling things” is not something that comes natural to me. It has always been my hope that readers will discover the book and feel the story is compelling, that it speaks to their sense of adventure, or appeals to their ideals in some way, and they’ll feel the desire to purchase the book.

If you like Science Fiction that is not conventional, that explores technologies, space, and many other things, including the human condition, then Sun Killers, from the Felis Alliance Series is going to be a book you enjoy. If you don’t like Science Fiction, but appreciate original writing, you still might enjoy the book.
Who knows, it has a cat in it, what can it hurt to try?
 
Thank you for reading. If you would like to read a sample of the book, you can do so at both the Kobo and Amazon websites. Softcover versions are also available from the Amazon site.