30 Before 30: Day 14 - Self publishing

Today, the link for my first published novel went up on Amazon. I ultimately decided to self publish. And being a poor artist, I also ended up designing my own book cover below.

Link to my book on Amazon (soon available for Kindle but I recommend the hard copy form because it's formatted better):

https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Bones-1-Ian-Adema/dp/1535059443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467568414&sr=8-1&keywords=Ian+Adema

A little history of this book (which is the first in a trilogy I haven't finished).

The first line I ever scrawled that this book would become happened in 2009 in a physics class. I had a thought that was a sentence and I wrote it down on a notepad.

Then, shortly before I joined the Army, I started the actual story. Shipped off to basic training, once I had free time there I had nothing more than paper and pencil. In that time I wrote the first 6 chapters of the novel, working my creative muscle and also entertaining the other trainees. When I arrived at advanced training, finally with access to a computer, I typed up those chapters and continued writing, finishing maybe about half the book.

When I shipped out to Hawaii, writing took a bit of a stand still at first. After about 6 months, I wrote a feature screenplay. Then I shot that screenplay. After principle production was done, I decided to discipline myself to write. I took out a template online with 365 days in boxes and I would write every day, checking off every box, no matter how little I wrote. Some days I wrote a few thousand words. Other days a few hundred.

In 45 days I had finished the novel while editing my feature and working on active duty in the Army. And I spent the past couple years, over time, coming back and revising the novel. Last year I tried to send it to publishers with no luck. I thought about it again this year but decided, in the end, that it was worth it to just self publish.

So that's what I've done.

I'm very proud of this book! I hope you'll enjoy Taron's journey as much as I have writing it and I look forward to completing his story for you down the road.