Spoiler: You won’t see the villain era coming…
A battle from the start…
Somewhere in the Caribbean, 2009Google won't become a verb for some years yet and I'm a hopeful teen scouring the internet, no clue what I'm doing or if any of it is right, just one thing is certain - I must be published.
I send a few emails from the Hotmail account I've had since secondary school, to websites that understand early on a contact page is important.
One writes back. Excitement grows when I open it. They took the time to reply, so maybe they're—
They say they're an anime company and I should try book publishers. I thank them and make a note to look beyond phrases like “creating great stories” when submitting next time.
I'm not discouraged.
A couple years later I meet a publisher of classics on vacation to the islands. He doesn't publish what I write, but reads my first novella - another story for another time - and says it reminds him of anime. I love the comparison, it also reminds me of that early sub, and it gives me a rush.
I don't give up.
I painstakingly search some more, I try again and again and ag…
A few books and short stories later, 2012…
Being first doesn’t mean they'll know your name…
I try my hand at self-publishing, one of the first Caribbean-based writers to do it and I'm buzzing again.
I'm marketing up a storm on Twitter - we don't know it becomes a letter yet - stuck in to the indie machine while submitting to agents, and it feels good, bad, and ugly.
I'm making graphics from scratch - Canva? What's that? - I'm scheduling posts, I'm on top of it all and the community grows. It stalls. It grows. It pretends. It ignores. It says all the right things, while giving little away.
It’s good, it's bad, it's ugly.
I'm putting old Myspace coding skills to use and my WordPress blog is picking up steam and followers. I’m commissioning book cover artwork that dents my pockets, and getting deeper into the publishing world.
Then life ramps up the crazy and burnout hits me hard before we know we’ll call it that, and it's 2013.
I leave my insanely stressful newspaper job and make Fiverr, Upwork, and Guru sing.
I’m focused, a remote working powerhouse before we know it'll become a buzz term. For now, people think I gave up a “high-paying journalism job to sit at home and do nothing.” Meanwhile I'm working all hours, on different timezones to accommodate clients, picking up all kinds of jobs - lots of cheap ones too that pay the rent when they're tallied.
I work for companies, orgs, websites, and yes, writers.
Writers need all kinds of services and I'm excited to dig in. I edit queries and synopses, say what works and what doesn't, I'm line and substantive editing, ghost writing, researching, and rewriting english passages for non-native English speakers.
I'm doing all the things with no real plan, no sustainable business structure, and not acknowledging that I should be using this growing knowledge and experience to benefit my career. Or life in general. I'm just loving getting paid for doing things I enjoy.
But it's not enough and I can't settle in reading books and submission materials all day, so corporate remote jobs pick up the slack. When they don’t, I fret behind closed doors where no one sees.
In the mess of figuring out moneymaking, I'm still writing, my goal - always write a better book than the last. Doesn't matter what genre, it just always has to be better than the last.
I'm achieving that, I see it with every line I read. I'm getting more look-ins from agents, more sales on Amazon - not tons, but more - more sweat, blood, and tears.
Now Twitter writer events and pitch competitions are starting to take off and it's eyes glued to promo screens, social media pandering, fakeness, bone-chilling despair, and it's only 2015…
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