Tag Archives: Writing

Blog post #16 – Finally, becoming a published author

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Heck, has it really been more than three months since my last post? What took me so long, what happened?

I became a published author. That’s what!

And it’s everything and nothing like I expected…

I woke up on the morning of Wednesday, 9 July, with an immense sense of gratitude, pride and relief.

The day before the debut novel was birthed to the world, and a project I’d been working on for more than three years had finally received its baptism. It was neither one of fire, nor an event bedecked with celebratory garlands. Instead, it was a quiet reckoning that all was just as it should be.

The truth is, I didn’t really know what to expect now the book had been published. I anticipated some anticlimactic emptiness, a kind of, ‘okay, what happens now?’ accompanied, perhaps, by a disappointment, or a wild excitement, depending on how sales went. May be fear, if there was something amiss; something I’d overlooked that disappointed purchasers of the book. A worst case scenario being the dreaded ‘poor review’.

You somehow imagine the world will stop and acknowledge your effort. Halt its forward motion to break off and recognize and admire your magnum opus, in that all-encompassing way that takes a hold of a person when something fully absorbs them.

In fact it was crickets.

What I hadn’t expected was the suspension of time, a sort of pause in my life and routine, as though my perception of daily repetitiveness was from a bubble, the humdrum world going on outside. Because of course these things, like the launch and publication of a book online, don’t happen in real-time, in person. It’s like a slow-motion scene. It takes time for people to buy and read and feedback. For platforms, like Amazon, to track purchases and Kindle Unlimited page reads. Or to approve a review.

And so nothing really happened. Excepting family, friends, and acquaintances in the know, who sent me ‘good luck’ messages, or said they were buying a copy of the book, and so on. This apparent pause on progress actually turned out to be a good thing. I didn’t feel compelled to do anything except sit, and wait, and acclimatize to my new status as a published author (whatever that means), without the pressure to do anything more for the time being.

I had been poised to react. But react to what exactly? As an author – or anybody for that matter who creates something, be it a work of art or a business, for example – you build these notions that humanity will go crazy when your ‘product’, hidden for so long under a bushel, finally gets its time in the sunshine. To be consumed, analyzed, studied and critiqued. Finally. Call it the moment of truth.

But of course the world, even reading communities, is not in the least bit interested in someone else’s hobby project. For that is what it was for so long. Until it wasn’t. And I decided to publish. To become a bona fide author.  

Again, in my naivety, I assumed book retailing platforms would keep me updated every step of the way. ‘Huey. Congratulations. In the last hour you have shipped a further 100 paperback copies of ‘The Otero County Disclosure: A novel for our times’. 30 customers in India have purchased the Kindle version. 90 people in the US have begun reading the Kindle Unlimited version…’ And so on.

Nope.

Silence.

There is such a thing for publishers called the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Dashboard. It’s fab. And as I came to discover, pretty exciting too when the algorithm kicks in and the data starts flowing. It does indeed track everything. But whereas I thought I’d be updated with real-time notifications sent on some app, or a text, email etc., you actually have to proactively use the dashboard to see the book’s sales’ performance. So it was, I went to work, toiled and waited.

Still nothing.

I went to bed with a sense of a party going on elsewhere. A party I wasn’t invited to. The book wasn’t mine anymore. It was everybody else’s. For them to do with it as they wished, when they wanted. And I was happy with that. At least no-one had messaged me to complain. I slept like a baby. Exhausted, after months of everything from editing, to working with editors, book cover designers, marketeers, and of course, dear readers; my newsletter subscribers, Facebook followers, and the like. I had many lovely messages throughout the day, but no-one was claiming it was a dead cert for the Pulitzer, or an Oprah hot pick.

The promotions kicked off and there was nothing further for me to do.

Nobody had yet read it. But still, nobody was yet complaining either.

So it was I awoke with a sense of calm, of a job well done. I really was a published author. Or was I? No-one said I was and perhaps the book hadn’t been published. There was an error or something? I determined to go downstairs and check. Surely someone who grants these titles (‘published author’) had sent me confirmation?

Still nothing. Inboxes bereft of updates, and social media and messaging apps had slowed to a trickle with incoming notices. I thought I better just check on the dashboard everything had gone off as planned.

First, I visited the Amazon.com site to check the novel was actually on sale. And there it was. In glorious crimson.

The words ‘Best Seller’.

My face throbbed with heat and excitement, and my chest felt as tight as a drum. I went to the dashboard and fumbled through log-in details and passwords. It seemed to take an age. Finally, the evidence. In simple text and numbers. Units processed, pre-orders, KU page reads, all neatly broken down by territory.

I think I may have hollered. Danced a jig. Blown my nose (I always blow my nose when I’m excited, a nervous tick).

It remained an Amazon #1 Best Seller in two of its three listed categories, in the US, for nearly a whole week. And during that time I felt moved to thank everybody I’d ever met. I will never forget those minutes and hours, stretching to a few days, this long, hot, summer now fading.

But here’s the truth. I haven’t shifted thousands of copies. Heck, I haven’t even broken even. But I now have a readership and the reviews have started to come in. It seems people are really enjoying reading it. The average rating is just under five stars and some folks have been kind enough to write multiple paragraphs about the book. A novel I wrote.

It. Gives. Me. So. Much. Pleasure!

The calm didn’t last and I’ve spent the past month-and-a-half since publication planning the book’s continued promotion and evolving its marketing. I’ve already got a new cover for the Kindle version coming out (see this post’s title image, above), and various other activities planned in the run up to Christmas. And then I’ll start over again, as I look to piggyback on Spielberg’s similarly themed movie (UFO disclosure) coming out next year.

Boy, have I learned so much in the process of becoming a published author. I’ve made far more mistakes than I have good decisions. But as someone once said, ‘if you’re not failing, you’re not learning’. How true.

So now, in between pushing the first book, I’m planning my second. And my third and fourth. A trilogy. Set for publication in 2026. Only next time I’ll be a published author and the stakes higher. But I’ll take all those achievements and failures, those lessons learned and the platform I’ve built, and create, nay, write, something magnificent. On the other hand, being published doesn’t change a thing. It just confirms that yes, I can do it. I should always have done it. And now I will do it again. And again, and again.

If you’re interested in reading the book, you can find it on Amazon, here (US). For other territories, go to your local Amazon and search ‘The Otero County Disclosure’.

Enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

Huey.

August 2025

Blog post #10 – The contradictions of being a writer

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I’ve got to do a public talk about my debut novel. A live audience. Two months from now.

I’m terrified.

That’s right. I can already feel the anxiety growing. ‘Performance’ is so far outside my comfort zone that fourteen years ago I declined my brother’s request to be best man at his wedding, a decision I still regret. Why did I turn down such an honour? Because of the responsibilities accompanying the role; meeting and greeting strangers, being in the public eye, and not forgetting the big one… the best man’s speech, the centrepiece for any wedding high jinx. You’re supposed to enlighten, entertain and riff. Be a raconteur extraordinaire. It was all I could do to get through my own wedding more than twenty years ago (alcohol, cigarettes and smelling salts did the trick). In the event, it was the happiest day of my life (joined now by the kids’ birthdays). My brother’s wedding was also a wonderfully special occasion and I did perform a role – being ‘stunt Dad’ for the day (having lost our father a few years earlier).

Why am I writing this? For two reasons really. Firstly, it’s incumbent upon an author to promote themselves, and their book(s), whether you’re on the first rung of the ladder (yours truly), or a global publishing phenomenon with a back catalogue stretching over decades.

Secondly, it harks back to a fundamental truth, or principle, necessary for impactful fiction writing; emotion. Or rather, emotional depth. Something I find difficult doing in public (may be it’s ‘British’ thing; that fabled reserve and stiff upper lip).

I’m going to refer back to my time working on the Netflix show (see an earlier post). Watching the actors perform in front of a crew of well over 50 – sometimes, with extras, the audience numbered in the hundreds – it became apparent why some folk are designed for performance and most of us aren’t. The actors laid themselves bare in search for authenticity bringing the characters to life. Much as I might like to think I could do the same, I couldn’t. I’m self-conscious, introverted, sometimes lacking in confidence. Why this is I can speculate, but there’s neither the time nor the space to go there today. The point is I could only watch and admire these young actors do their thing, seemingly oblivious to everyone and everything going on around them. It was all so very easy and natural for them to put on a performance.

And yet. When I write I feel able to express myself in a way I never can verbally, in conversation. That’s not to say I can’t, it just doesn’t feel natural. I don’t crave social occasions and talking to strangers is not easy. Mostly people don’t notice (or claim not to), but inside I twist myself in knots. But I find it easy to describe characters’ inner lives and turmoil, their hopes and fears and most secret, embarrassing, awkward thoughts. Similarly, I can write about my own failings quite happily. The funny thing is, people regularly say they can’t do the same, that is to say ‘write how I feel’. And these are the very people I look to with admiration for their ability to hold a room captive with anecdotes and engaging repartee (I’m hardwired not to do small talk, I wish I could!).

For me, talking, presenting, engaging a larger audience face-to-face on the same subjects I write about is a challenge.

Things have got easier over the years, for a host of reasons. Not least I’m older and wiser. My day job regularly requires me to ‘host’ calls, or village and town halls, with hundreds of people. Or facilitate busy working sessions. I’ve had to. It’s part of the quid pro quo climbing the career ladder. But strangely nothing feels quite as natural as writing, even in the knowledge these words will enter the public domain, be read, and critiqued.

Reading about authors’ experiences, and book promotion in particular, I have the sense I’m not alone. It seems many of us dread this aspect of a job which is, inherently, an isolating pursuit. Perhaps that’s why we write; a form of expression that’s uncomfortable using other, more direct (in person) methods. Who knows.

For a while I even hid my fiction under a bushel. Too embarrassed to share it. This could be because of the mantra ‘write what you know’ thus whatever is written is somehow autobiographical. Well perhaps. However, studying creative writing and working in a collaborative, supportive group, finally gave me the courage to bring my fiction out into the light. I came to realise the only way I was going to get better as a writer was by engaging with others and putting it out there. It’s been a blessing. At the end of the day, it all comes down to mindset, and overcoming the human instinct of putting ourselves at the centre of every story. The truth is, most people neither ‘see’ you, nor care. They’re too busy worrying about themselves.

Back to the talk in May. Yes, it fills me with terror, yes I’m worried I’ll fluff my lines, embarrass myself (or shame my family who’ll be present!). But I have chosen to do this. I must put myself out there. I’ll be talking about my book, after all. A subject I’m passionate about and know inside and out. I suppose my fear comes from being so emotionally invested with the story and the wider publishing process. I want to avoid a misstep that might impact the novel’s success. That includes messing-up in front of an audience.

For me anyway, the process of writing and now publishing a novel points up the contradictions of being a writer. On the one hand we can expose ourselves emotionally on the page and yet, ask us to do the same on a stage and it can all get a little tricky. What do you think?