My story with indie publishing isn’t much different from probably thousands of others. I’ve been writing for more years than Amazon has been around. Always had dreams of holding my published book in my hands. Feeling proud. Seeing the proud looks on my family and friend’s faces. Oh, the dreams.

I won’t bore you with all that because maybe you feel/felt the same. In short, I was excited and scared when I heard how easy it is to self-publish my own stories. I’m shy and never had an overabundance of confidence, so skipping literary agents, traditional publishing and all that entailed sounded as good to me as a hot brownie sundae. Yum!

My husband, Brian, teases me about the amount of research I do with everything. (It took me several months of studying Twitter before I signed up). So it was no surprise that I spent more time researching self-publishing than actual writing. Thank God for NaNoWriMo, which I’ve been participating in for the past seven years. I wrote drafts which led to actual novels. And I chose one I bonded with and started editing. And proofreading. And I continued my research.

Finally, in January of 2018, with the encouragement and maybe a little hassling from Brian, I hit the publish button on Amazon and released my first novel, Bring Me to Life, on Kindle.

And guess what? So what?

I realized faster than I’d like to admit that my novel and my place on Amazon is nothing in this crazy sea of indie authors. I’m not special, and apart from some supportive friends and family, nobody cared that I sweated through the entire process and it took every ounce of courage I’ve ever possessed to hit that publish button.

So what?

Yeah, I published my first novel. Yes, I was and am still happy I did it. I feel something close to pride on good days. And on the bad days…well I’m still happy it’s out there.

So what? Well, I know now I could’ve done better with the marketing. I should’ve released another book soon after. I should’ve…well it doesn’t matter because here I am. It’s April of 2019 and what matters is what I do now.

And what I do now is move forward. I’m a proud indie author. I smile when I see my book on Amazon. And I’m hopeful that this writing journey of mine is just the beginning.

That’s what.