It’s been one week since I hit the publish button on Waiting in The Sky, and I’ve been blown away with positive responses. To everyone who has bought, read, and reviewed it, please accept my heartfelt thanks. A number of readers have mentioned that it’s different from my other books – this is true, and I wanted to help you understand the reasoning behind it.
If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers but in essence, there’s no weirdness in Waiting in The Sky: no time-travel, no mysterious oddballs, and no dead man in double-denim. It does contain some of the same ingredients as my other books but I used a different recipe.
Let me explain why.
As I’m sure most of you already know, I publish all my books independently – that means I don’t work with a publisher like the majority of authors you probably read. Up until now, that has been my preferred option because it means I can write as many books as a Iike and publish them whenever I like. However, for every positive there’s usually a negative, and in my case it’s a sense that I’ll never be accepted as a ‘proper’ author until one of my books is on the shelves of Waterstones, WHSmiths, etc.
If we travel back in time to January 2021 (God forbid), I made a decision to write a book that would appeal to a broader, mainstream audience because I wanted to pitch it to a traditional publisher. I also have to admit my head has been a bit messed up over the last year what with the pandemic and a chaotic house move. If you’ve read the afterword in Waiting in The Sky, you’ll understand why such disruption to my structured life was not welcome. Writing the book turned out to be like therapy… a method to keep my sanity in check.
Anyway, it took longer than anticipated to write the book and when I finished it, I had a change of heart. Even though I’ve written twelve books and sold a lot of those books, trying to get a publishing deal would still have involved a lot of jumping through hoops and a smattering of rejection. On top of that, it usually takes at least a year from finishing the book to the moment it lands on a retailer’s shelves. As much I might have fancied validation by the mainstream publishing industry, I just don’t have the patience to get there – my bad.
I think I’ve bored you enough now, but hopefully you can now understand why Waiting in The Sky is like its author – a bit different. :o)
Oh, and rest assured I’ll be returning to my usual recipe for the next book… whatever that next book is.
