Yes, you read that correctly! In case you missed the flurry of changes to the website (or aren’t friends on my Instagram/FB), I officially published Enceladus! You can find it for Kindle here or in paperback here, but also just searching my name on Amazon will bring it right up. It’s also available as part of Kindle Unlimited, so if you’re already a member, feel free to download and read it today!
Once you’ve had a chance to read it, I would really appreciate an Amazon review. Having multiple reviews really boosts visibility and lends a bit more credibility to a little self-published book like mine. I’m not saying you have to rate it 5 stars (though if you think it deserves it, by all means), but showing that people have read it and are willing to share their thoughts for other potential readers helps.
Also, for those interested or curious, I’m looking into uploading the book to IngramSpark which would allow me to sell the paperback in multiple online retailers (including potentially directly from my website) and would allow independent bookstores who may be interested to purchase copies for sale in their stores. More to come on that front in a future post!
After I had a second to take a breath in December, I went back and looked through some of my notes and posts dating back to when I first started working on Enceladus. I realized that it has been almost four years from the time I first had the idea for the story to now. I even found the original story idea page in my OneNote notebook I use for jotting down interesting ideas when they strike me (and that page was dated February 22, 2022). Some aspects of my original idea ended up changing, but the basic premise and the overall story beats were all there from the start.
It’s a little surreal to think people can buy and read my book. This has been a dream of mine since I was maybe 8 or 9 years old when I would get in trouble for writing in class or when I spent afternoons writing stupid Redwall fan-fiction with my cousin in my grandparents’ basement. Just to have a book on my bookshelf that has my name on it is wild. I wish I had the mental capacity to read through it again, but the sheer amount of times I have read that book in the past six months alone, picking apart every detail and tweaking every paragraph, I think I need a small break.
Don’t worry. That small break doesn’t apply to the series at large, just to reading book one. My plan is not to take another four years for the sequel. Right now, I would love to get a first draft of book two done before the end of the year. With the flurry of steps I had to take in December to get book one ready and finished, I ended up taking a small break from writing. You may have noticed that the percentage didn’t tick up on the main page. But that’s ok. Now that I’ve had some time to celebrate the holidays with friends and family and dusted my hands off for getting Enceladus out there, it’s time for me to buckle down and continue writing book two. If my plan to keep it at roughly the same word count as Enceladus holds true, I’ve got about 80,000+ words to go. I would love to hit at least 10,000 words a month from here on out which would give me extra time at the end of the year to start draft two. Who knows, maybe I’ll channel my inner Brando Sando and get even more than that done this month.
Until next time!