The Day I Finally “Felt” Like I Was an Author By: Author Skye Turner

Guest Blog Post

The Day I Finally “Felt” Like I Was an Author

By: Author Skye Turner

About seventeen months ago, I started on this journey called self-publishing. One day in the summer of 2013, while my husband was offshore and my kids were running around my house like crazy little people, I sat at my laptop and decided to get the ideas that were living in my head… out.

I wrote like a person possessed that day. I think I wrote something like nine thousand words. It was like now that I was finally allowing the voices in my head to talk, they had so much to say. 

My first book was written in ten days. I worked literally twenty to twenty-two hours a day. I didn’t sleep, I think I might have showered a time or two, but ten days later… I was done. My first book, Alluring Turmoil, the beginning of Bayou Stix, was written.

That was step one. I used to think that people wrote books and then people read them. I was so green. I literally had no idea what I was getting into, but I decided that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it like everything else in my life and do it big.

I researched cover designers and editors (though I was an editor). I thought I was going to format the book myself, but after countless YouTube videos, tears, and almost throwing my laptop across the room, I asked some friends for someone to rescue me from formatting hell, and got the name of my formatter. 

I worked on Alluring Turmoil for months… writing, revising, editing, revising again, allowing betas to read it, talking to my cover designer, working with my editor, then formatting…

I reached out to so many people that I’d followed and admired and I promoted myself and my work. I did all of this for MONTHS before I ever published.

Then, it was time… time to push the button and release my book into the world. Feedback had been pretty good from people who’d received ARC’s. Certain blogs told me I stunk and that I shouldn’t release and they were sorry, but they couldn’t recommend the book. That stung, but I pushed on. I submitted the book to be published… and then I waited. I was a nervous wreck and I had this extreme urge to vomit or curl up into the fetal position in the corner, but I did it…

Alluring Turmoil went “Live” on September 11, 2013 (two days before it was supposed to). I didn’t know anything, but I started checking the sales numbers… holy smoke… people were buying my book. I think I did vomit at one point from the nerves and stress.

By September 12, 2013 I was receiving feedback… people for the most part LIKED my book… I couldn’t help but think this was some sort of cosmic joke. I mean people I’d once looked up to and read everything they produced, were now reading MY work. WHAT?! This was crazy. I’m just a wife and mommy with a dream from Smalltown, Louisiana. I was a tiny blip in the big world of authors.

The messages and reviews started coming in and while most were good, there were some bad, those hurt at first… as time went on, I realized… wow, I need to write another book. 

So, I did. And then I write four more. The conclusion to the Bayou Stix series comes out this Friday, November 21. But the truth is… now seventeen months into this, I think I finally feel like an author.

I wake up every day and think to myself… I write books. I entertain people. I involve people in my stories. People travel to events to meet me and express their joy from my work. I receive messages from all over the world and every single day, I pinch myself and grin.

That is surreal. I’ve written six books in seventeen months. I generally produce new material every ninety days… but until recently I’ve never thought of myself as an author…

I do now and trust me… it’s the best feeling.