Feet or Fins was first published four years ago. It entered the world quietly because I didn’t market it and that was a good thing because of how bad it was written. I had to have a friend point it out to me and I went back and was like, ‘Yeah, your right. Good thing no one bought it.’
That was my first foray into the self-publishing world and boy was I glad no one noticed. I did like 14/15 drafts of that book and it still wasn’t good enough 😦 But the next draft was immensely better. Thank you, friend.
For the longest time, it was only on Smashwords and then I got over the idea that Amazon was somehow lesser because it was a global corporation and knew that it would help me if I joined. Then I used the site to create a paperback version. By this stage, I had created a second cover image and when I finally got around to ordering a physical copy for myself I saw a few formatting issues. I used asterisks to separate some scenes instead and a few of them were out of place. Recently I updated my cover image again! I think this one is a lot nicer, and it features two mermaids.
Save One is out 🙂 It is 32,230 words long and it sits in the Young Adult and Dystopian genres. It can also be a little bit of a Coming of Age story as well.
I began Save One around July of ’17. While it took two years to complete, I was not actively working on it all the time. In fact, I would do a few drafts in close succession and then nothing for months on end. The reason this story took a while to come out was because of; burnout, other stories taking my time and, the fact that it was not my most prized story at the time. I was constantly suffering ‘Shiney New Idea Syndrome’ during this time and it took a bit of a backburner until I finally decided to finish it.
Another reason why it took so long was that I was a bit hesitant in putting out the story was because I made the main character black and I am white. I made her a different race simply because I’ve always written white characters and it was a bit boring. And the idea of having more diverse characters was starting to become a thing that needs to happen. I’m worried that it’ll come off wrong, but I’m not writing a contemporary story from the black experience. That’s why my first book cover was the black and white one. I changed it to the one above because I didn’t want to seem like I was using race to my advantage. Also, I like colour more than black and white and there is a forest scene near the end of the book.
