Hello again!
If you can remember my “Victorian experiment” post from January of last year then you just may remember me mentioning that I was editing a Steampunk Spy novel, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about today.
No, it’s not out yet (unfortunately) and no, I’m not talking about editing either, (although I may do so in the future.) I’m going to talk about my first ever novel; what’s inside (without spoilers that is) and a little bit about what’s it’s taken me to get here.
So let's start with the “pitch” shall we? My story, (which is still between names,) is about Grace; a Victorian lady, and mother who is looking back on her youth. “But wait, I thought that you said this was a spy story?” It is, and that’s the hook, Grace, this now seemingly settled mother of two girls was once a young spy. “Well, what happened?” That, my dear reader, is what the story, which will span a trilogy once it’s done, is about. During this particular venture into the past, Grace looks back on her first “serious” mission, which took place aboard the world’s first cruising submarine. She was tasked with helping her partner, John, watch the Liberté à Jesse gang, who believe that Jesse James did not die of a shot to the back, but rather that he is held in a prison, and that he should be free to spread trouble throughout the Country once more. Her boss believes that this dangerous gang may have caught wind of Samuel, a man who claims to have invented a gold detecting machine, and as it was in the thick of the Klondike Gold rush, this would be a very crucial piece of tech. As you would expect, things start to go wrong, and Grace quickly found herself trapped in greater danger than she could have imagined, with little more than her training as a spy, and her faith in God to guide her.
Sound interesting? I hope so, as it’s taken me over two years to get here. “Where is here?” Well… Here is coming up on ready to self-publish my book through Amazon, and most of the way through editing the sequel as well. What has it taken to get me here? Sweat and tears. “No blood?” None of my own anyways… and I’ll leave you to chew on that. In all honesty, my first book should be out by now, I should have been able to finish it in a year to a year and a half, but I couldn’t yet. Writing this book has been more of a learning experience than I can express, and although it may sound like an exaggeration, it has actually helped me to grow as a person as well as a writer. When I started I couldn’t write every day, nor did I really care to, I would tap down a few words when the muse hit me, but otherwise I basically just ignored it. Now I can write and edit almost every day, not to say that I always do, but I’m getting there.
Now, I’ll admit something that no writer should, I didn’t hire anyone to help finish my book. From editing to cover design it’s been my mom, myself, and a beta reader or two more recently. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been edited by myself and my mom and an online grammar checker. And my cover looks far from amateurish, but technically these are tasks which are usually farmed out… for good reason. Why didn’t I hire someone to do the work? It’s not cheap, and much as I love my books, and writing them, I need to be practical, I know that the odds against my books selling well are astronomical, and as such I’m going to need to treat my writing as an intensive hobby till I have a good handful of regular readers.
That said, as we designed my cover ourselves, you can have a sneak peek, I posed myself for the photos, with my mom as my photographer, and you can see a few of the photos that we didn’t decide to use!
Thanks for the read!
