Are y’all tired yet?

Read Part One and Part Two before diving in…

I eventually got my rights back for my dark historical fantasy and, honestly, I celebrated that day. I didn’t want that book out in the world, mutilated as it was. I went into the manuscript and revised it, transforming it back into the story it was meant to be. I had one copy printed—for me. Someday, I may publish it again. But for now, I’m happy keeping this story to myself. It’s been through enough.

And yeah, I didn’t write any new fiction for nearly ten years. I think attempting to play the publishing game had finally taken its toll, and for a while there, I didn’t think I’d ever write another book again. I was struggling with consuming fiction in all its forms, as well; every book/movie/TV show I started bored me, like I’d experienced it before. I was hunting for something and couldn’t find it, whatever it was.

Then my dad died.

My dad loved to read, and was an excellent writer himself, albeit non-fiction. He taught me how to read literature critically, and he even edited The Noble Pirates for me before I officially published it. I think he was even more proud of that book than I am. About a week after he passed, I was helping my mom go through a stack of old notebooks and papers he’d kept on a shelf in his closet, and found pages and pages of… fiction.

I started to really think about my dad’s life, about how he was American born but still very much an immigrant, and the idea for Manzakar took root in my mind. You can read more about my inspiration for the story here.

The story gushed from me. Suddenly, I was writing fiction again—when I should have been working, sleeping, running errands… It was all I thought about, all I wanted to think about. I finished it in three months, then took two more to edit it. The story excited me in a way not even The Noble Pirates had; I knew I had something good here. I also knew, without question, that not a single literary agent would give it the time of day—not that I wanted to go through all that ever again.

Manzakar is one of those stories (like all of my stories, apparently) that doesn’t neatly fit in a box. On the surface, it just sounds like another hero’s journey, another fantasy with a reluctant hero who must go into battle to save the world. And it is those things. But what makes it different is hard to put into words. One Goodreads reviewer said it best:

…The reality is that Manzakar imagines a world that very few authors are capable of imagining. You are not getting a carbon copy plot of every other fantasy book you read this year. Convincing you how this book is different is almost impossible without spoilers, because I do not have a single point of comparison. It is, in a word, novel. There is hope here, and a shape of hope that is entirely its own.

And not having a single point of comparison is a major problem in the current publishing scene, as I’ve discussed before. Without successful comps, my story had a snowball’s chance in hell at getting traditionally published.

But before committing to self-publishing, I decided to reach out to a very successful author friend of mine for whom I had done freelance editing way back when: Tanya Anne Crosby. We’d been friends for a while and she had started her own publishing company, Oliver-Heber Books, that included a wide variety of genres, including epic fantasy. Tanya had read and loved TNP, and since she’d hired me as her editor before, she knew I could write. I shot off an email and, in under an hour, she replied, “Send the manuscript over.”

Working with OHB has been the kind of experience every author hopes for: I retain complete creative control of my stories, have open and continuous communication with my editor, and get a variety of choices for book covers. And even though OHB is a small press, the marketing has been better than my previous experiences at bigger publishers.

So that’s it. That’s how I got here. I have two books from The Slave-Soldier Series out and one more in the works. I’m hopeful that, over time, my books will find a larger audience, but even if they don’t, I remind myself: I am creating art that I am so incredibly proud of. And if all my stories ever do is bring a handful of people some joy, that is more than enough for me.

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