The Beginning Journey
Distant Saga Trilogy—The First Foray Into Novel Writing
I’ve talked about this experience many times over, on my YouTube channel, discussion boards, and mentions on other social media chats. This collective story trilogy was my greatest introduction (and learning experience) into how not to make a novel. I mean, there’s spelling mistakes galore, structure issues, terrible endings, and a slew of formatting issues I just couldn’t resolve for the life of me. I essentially started writing this book with no knowledge on how to do any of it. Should I have attended a class? Researched other books? Talked to other self published authors? Well, yes… yes I should have… but I didn’t. Not that I wasn’t willing to do so, or lack of putting the effort into it, I just didn’t have time (or money) to peruse those avenues. Look, I just started a full time job, on night shift, with my wife and I welcoming our newborn son. It was a time of utter exhaustion and chaos. I had the stories written from earlier years, and one on the tip of my brain I was hoping to plot down. I had an old Mac, from my attempt to be a graphic designer (a story for another time) and no real writing program to use that would help me flesh it out.
It wasn’t until I had an injury at work, where I was off for several months, that I managed to acquire a new computer, and discovered the internet had places to go to “self-publish”. I finally had the time and an outlet to bring my ideas to life. I combined three science fiction stories I had finished: The Cure, Incident on Bio-Moon Five, and The End of Time. I tried to use QuarkXpress to format the book (Ugh! What nightmare…), only to see it shift and contort on the printed pages. Then I tried to use an online publishing service (I forgot the name of it), which didn’t like the Word files I used to upload onto it. Still, I thought it would work anyway, and spent money to have it printed and shipped to my home. The first cover I made was very badly done. How embarrassing for a former graphic artist like me. The book itself was spaced out in places, not edited at all, and read like garbage. Strike one on my authoring abilities.
The second revision I did was slightly better. I combed through the stories, edited as much as I could or fix, created a better cover for it, and made it ebook and print on demand only. I read different articles on self publishing, drawing on other’s experiences and advice. The book did no sales. I was confused. Little did I realize, marketing would have to be my next learning experience. Strike two on my authoring abilities. I was almost ready to give up, until I discovered a fantastic self publish novel that was on Audible. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor, was a fantastic book that had an amazing actor (Ray Porter) reading the story. Audible was still just in its infancy, with many other self published authors joining on to make their books as well. I thought, “why the hell not.”, and did the same.
Royalty sharing didn’t sound too appealing to me. But, if a producer/voice actor could help make it possible, I was willing to give it a go. I made the mistake of hiring the first guy who made an offer, I probably should have waited till others had a chance. Nevertheless, the audio got made, it went up on the site, and it sounded… uh… well… okay, I guess. I’d never heard an audiobook before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The book finally got reviews after a few months… and they were horrible. Some found the stories lacking in character development, the story questionable (especially in the details), and the one or two stars killed it’s momentum. I was devastated. There was another short story I tacked on to the trilogy, just to add to the page count, and it got more attention than the rest of the book itself. The story was called, Outer Red, a reimagining of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as well as, Little Red Riding Hood.
Yeah, that was the story that had been on the top of my brain I mentioned earlier. I combined two old classics into a sci fi fantasy hybrid. Turns out that people were interested in that one more, even the guy who voiced my book. It was the only story he managed to bring to life better than the rest. I could hear his enthusiasm in reading it. That sparked my interest. I began rewriting the entire short story of Outer Red and focused on creating more parts to it. Finally, I was on my way to something meaningful. Distant Saga Trilogy was failure, but from it came a better idea, and made me more determined than ever to continue writing my ideas. Do I still have the collective book available? No, I decided to retire it from being published. Both the ebook and print versions are now unavailable. Only the Audible version is still up and running. I may yet go back and revamp those stories, if I feel inclined to do so, but for now, no, it needed to rest.
You might find a copy somewhere on EBay or another reseller, but I doubt it’s in circulation anymore. Probably for the best. Anyways, I focused my attention on the next book, hoping this time things would turn out for the better. Well, I was about to be surprised again, making my authoring strike out almost complete. But that’s for the next instalment of Behind The Pages—The Outer Red Rebirth.
Until then, thanks for reading, subscribe for more, leave a comment or like, and purchase my books thar are currently available for sale.
