This week is a weird week! It’s the week before my novel, Archwilde, finally is published on May 17th, 2022! For the last five years I have written, rewritten and edited several drafts of this book to get it to where it is supposed to be. And for the last five months I have been feverishly working on the final edits and proofreading, the book layout and the cover designs, the website and marketing plan. I’ve done so much research on indie publishing that I dream in YouTube episodes when I go to sleep. I’m as prepared as I can possibly be to let this book out into the world, and yet I feel like there is still so much to learn and do. But that’s to be expected when launching your debut novel, so I will keep keepin’ on!
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I wrote the original draft of Archwilde when I was in high school. I still have that draft, written in (mostly) purple pen, in tattered old notebooks covered in doodles and phrases that are little time capsules from my teenage self. To hold those notebooks in one hand, and the trade paperback of the finished book in the other, is so surreal that I’m having difficulty processing it. So much joy, and nostalgia.
Fifteen-year-old-me probably never thought about publishing this book. She was a shy geek who just wanted adventure and romance, and who believed magic was real and that good will triumph over evil. Now, in my forties, I know that those things are real and attainable, but far more complicated than Disney movies would have my teenage self believe. That old first draft is fun and full of heart, and embarrassingly, beautifully cheesy, and it will always be a part of me. But it took sitting down with it in my forties, and completely rewriting it from scratch over five years and multiple drafts, to finally find the way this story wanted to be told. And I’m really proud of how this book turned out.
You can get a trade paperback copy of Archwilde on May 17th on Amazon, and on any ebook platform. I’ll also be selling signed copies here on this Website starting next week, along with other cool Archwilde goodies! And if you do read the book, whether you love it or can’t get through it, I would really, wholeheartedly appreciate an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookstagram or BookTok. Reviews mean the world to Indie Authors!
Perhaps someday on this blog I’ll do a side-by-side comparison of the first page of Chapter One from each draft. That’d be a fun thing to see! I’ll have to remember this for a future Throwback Thursday …
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