In the Begining Part #4

With the feedback from my daughters, I began to try and learn how to not write as an engineer and more as a story teller. The next eight months were revision after revision on weekends and evenings. My day time work was a focus on training a software team, software architecture, design, testing, and documents. I was trusted to build a team and develop a new set of products for the Surface Navy (there are actually 5 different Navies…Subs, Surface, Air, C4I and Logistics and at that time, they were all different…and sometimes, still are).

After 20+ revisions and months of nights, weekends of work, both writing work and technical work, I thought I was at a good point with the book. I passed it by my youngest daughter, she said to release it (in hind sight, I think she was just tired of me bothering her).

I began to look at how to publish the book “Connections”. My decision was to go Indie and expecting to make tons of money, I invested $1000 in a package to get the book out through an indie publisher. My youngest daughter was working though art school and I convinced her she should do the book cover. The results were exciting when the first hardcopy and softcopy books were delivered to me in October 2011. A month later, the ebook was released and I waited for money to start rolling in began.

Of course I set up a web page, a face book page and a twitter account. By the first quarter of 2013 I anxiously awaited my first check…$12.00

I should have known better. I had built a company that ultimately failed (a failed software company with no money for marketing). I have worked for large companies and small, I have been a consultant. I have worked on projects from the bottom of the ocean to outer space, I have spent months at sea and traveled the world. I sat down and decided I needed a different approach if this was to ever give me something for my retirement. Being in my early 60’s I knew I would not retire till I reached my 70’s; but still I needed a better plan, a better approach.

I began to work on book two and within the year, had released “Conversions”. I began work on the third book in the series “Evolution”. By that point I had received some feedback, the main one being…I needed to have the book edited, there were a number of language and other errors.

I finished work on book three in the spring of 2014. After contemplation, I decided to terminate my contract with the first publishing house and save money through Amazon. I know there are a lot of nay-sayers that are negative, but for someone that is not #1 on New York Times list, saving money is “saving money”.

My second decision was that while I am now of the mind that I write because I like to tell the tale, I wanted to get the books cleaned up. I found an editing firm that took a pass on the three books. This again was not cheap (~$1000 per book) I liked the second pair of eyes that helped clean things up not only within each book, but also caught problems across the books.

In Oct 2014, the final book editing was completed. With a quick weekend effort, the books were uploaded to Amazon and Create Space for release.

But those who are writers know this is only the 2nd step in the process. I needed to update my web site that I had turned over to my son to take care of (he has a full time job and is going to school for IT). So I took back over the web site and started making alterations (including adding this blogging capability).

So next blog is how I did all the other things you can find on the site.