Good Morning
Everyone! (well, at least it’s
morning for me as I write this in my home which is in a little town called
Darley, not too far from Melbourne, Australia).
Firstly, a little bit about myself. I’m an author writing under M L
Sawyer. I also work full time as a
real estate agent and I’m about to be a first time mum. My current releases are young adult fantasy
novels that are part of a series- Quest of the Demon, Tallen and Elflings
(which just came out this December).
Instead of bombarding you about my books (which can be found through Amazon,
Smashwords and through some book stores in Australia), I’ve decided to write
about doing what you think you can, as opposed to giving up when others tell
you that you can’t.
For me, Quest of the Demon was originally
finished in 2001 where I promptly sent it out to publishers. Epic fail. I heard back from only one publisher after months and months
with a polite no thanks. The rest
ignored me. People told me to get
published, it would be like winning tats lotto, so why bother?
Me, I’ve never been one to listen too hard
to those who say you can’t, shouldn’t, won’t be able to… so I kept on
writing. At least the stories
would eventually be finished and I’d know that I did what I’d set out to do.
So I kept writing, polishing my craft,
working on my stories. Every few
years I’d do another draft of Quest of the Demon before sending it off to a
publisher, just to test the waters… 14 years after I first began writing it,
and one finally said yes! It was a
small publisher, but I didn’t care.
I love writing and I don’t do it for the money, I do it because I can. The chance to see my work in print was
so exciting!
So in March 2011, Quest of the Demon was
released!
Followed by Tallen in
Dec 2011 and now Elflings just released in Dec 2012.
Even after Quest of the Demon came out,
some people were supportive while others… let’s just say they hold their own
opinions. They hadn’t heard of my
publisher before so they were of the opinion of ‘well, anyone can do
that’. I’m not a negative person,
but sometimes you just want to say… well, I won’t say it here, but you can
imagine...
My publishing journey didn’t stop
there. Of course, being a small
publisher, my book didn’t instantly arrive in book stores Australia wide. I had to get out there, so I researched
marketing. Everyone needs their
own website – this is a given, but who has the spare money to pay for one to be
set up for you? So here begin the
hard yards, I can write – but writing html? What on earth is that?
Information for whatever you want to do is
out there, you just have to teach yourself. In this instance google was my friend. You can find almost anything on google. So many late nights and a fair bit of
trial and error and finally, I got my website up and running www.mlsawyer.com.au – I’m pretty proud of
doing this all by myself considering I’m not all that tech savvy. Even so, having a website doesn’t mean
people automatically flock to it and instantly know about your work.
I also found out this newish medium called
book teasers; like a short movie teaser for your book. ‘What fun’ I thought. I have never made a movie in my life
let alone an animated one. Again,
much trial and error later, I finally have a you tube channel. Now this is taken for granted by YA’s
today, but when I was at school, Hotmail had just come out, not everyone had
the internet and you tube, facebook, twitter – none of this existed!
So, for the book teasers, I’ll let you be
the judge – again, there’s negative people out there but who cares, I had fun
making them, whether they attract people to my work or not, if you’ve watched
the video, you know about it.
Not the most high budget of productions,
but again, I had fun and they’re out there. Moving forward, I’m now working on Silence Rising so it’s
ready for release next year. From
there, 3 more books. Subversion,
Deceiver and… well, the final book which I haven’t named yet. Who knows, maybe when the time comes
I’ll have enough fans to run a book naming contest!
Anyway, to conclude my guest post, writing
may not be your thing, but whatever it is you enjoy doing, do it. Who cares what other people think or
what your chances are. J K Rowling
was writing Harry Potter whilst unemployed – she was told she wouldn’t make it
and some publishers turned down her books (how much are they kicking themselves
now!) Same thing happened with
George Lucas, his script was turned down multiple times (writer of Star Wars)…
how much is Star Wars worth now?
Life is full of setbacks and naysayers, but
as long as you’re enjoying yourself, who’s to tell you that you can’t do
something? You’ll never know
unless you try and even if it doesn’t turn out like you thought it would, you
have the satisfaction of knowing you did that, it was you! I find there’s no greater feeling.
