Starting Off

I sincerely hope that this is not everyone's experience but when I finished writing my first book I imagined that a publisher would come frantically knocking at my door, anxious to take the manuscript off my hands and bring it to the world. Little did I know that the writing, which I had imagined to be the hard work, was really just the first step. Between writing the book and having a finished copy in the hands of many, many readers there are hundreds, if not thousands of other little steps.

My initial reaction at this was dismay. How lucky these big authors are to be able to hand all of that drudgery over to agents and publishers I thought. But then I started to take those first few steps. Proof-reading. Thinking about a cover. Formatting your book. Creating a PDF version of your book. Choosing the font. Figuring out how to get your page numbers in the right spot. Playing with margins.

All of this stuff which I approached with trepidation has been so much fun. Hand on heart I can say that I was an ignoramous about most things to do with computers. I had no idea about fonts, pixels, megabytes and J-Pegs. And yet this book that I have written has taken me on an adventure. Not only can I now call myself a writer but I am also a publisher, a book formatter, a designer and my career in marketing is just beginning.

''The Father - A Story of Love'' is complete now. It is a book, a tangible object. It has made its way from idea to reality, often in spite of me. And still the adventure is not finished. Now comes the business of getting people to read it which if the past is anything to go by will be challenging, eye-opening, frustrating, scary, amazing and inspiring. I'll come up against things that I would rather not do, things that make me squirm with embarrassment, things that seem impossible. And God Willing I will get past all of this.

I intend this blog to be an account of how this adventure unfolds.