Saturday, October 3, 2009

Birthin' Book Babies

















Welcome to the blog-den for author Leahsandra Powell.
Apparently blogging is vital for marketing and promoting
our books. Someone wish me luck, please!

My husband Nick and I published 6 books this year, using CreateSpace, a POD (print on demand), company that helps us to not waste our precious trees. What a blast! It proved an absolute joy to finally hold our book-babies in our arms.

I started writing Woman... Speak! in 1993, and Nick began working on his book Twelve Years with a Wolfdog at the same time.We sit just a feet away from each other back here in the office and the sounds of clacking keyboards was about all you heard around here. Well, maybe a wolfdog howl or two. Maybe a "does this sentence sound stupid?" Maybe a human howl once or twice too.

After years or rewriting, numerous 'last drafts' - grin - editing and proof swapping with other writers, query-letter and synopsis struggles, and not a peep back from the traditional publishing world, we spent months scoping out the plethora of self-publishing companies.

Finally, we chose to try CreateSpace. After weeks of straining my brain, I realized I'm too much of a computer doofus to figure out the techie end. Nick, who works full time at UPS and didn't have the energy to help, agreed to hire my freelance web-writing partner to do the struggling for us. Dena Lambert became our amazing book-birthin' midwife extraordinaire. She delivered my first book, Spirit Stories into the world in November of 2008.

I had grown myself up - finally - into a published author. Woo HOO. What a long, strange trip it's been.

I had wanted to start with Spirit Stories rather than my bigger books,because those are the peek highlights of my life - "The true tales of "Divine inspiration, intervention, and healing." (I just quoted from my own book. How cool is that?)

I was facing tests at Mayo Clinic that December, for a pre-cancerous challenge known as Barret's Esphagus, that had turned to cancer several times. I'd not been feeling well and really thought The Verdict wouldn't be good.

I wanted my Spirit Stories to live on, as well as check out this whole self-publishing gig and see what happened, just in case The Verdict was good. (Yay. It was.)

We were so delighted with the service and quality of CreateSpace, we decided to jump whole hog and get all our books out there.

Whew! What a wild ride this last year has been.

Next post - "Don't make the mistakes I did!" Grin!

4 comments:

  1. Welcome to the blogging world! "Why, Miss Leahsandra, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' book babies'......so I look forward to your blogs, hoping to learn from yours and Nick's experiences. Blessings, friend!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh you are sooooooooooooo much fun to read. Still reading your "Spirit Stories" in between Cussler, Baldacci, & Connoly. Haha, (love a good mystery/adventure). I carry it with me everywhere. Wondering how this blog thing works?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm still a bit confused on how the whole blog thing works but m'lady, Leahsandra, is learning the ropes and we have (as the ant said to the rubber tree) "High hopes" :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Following you. Can't wait to see what comes next!

    ReplyDelete