In Which I Wrote A Book

For those who may have missed it, I recently self-published my first novel, Losing Dominion. If you haven't already, please visit http://losingdominion.wordpress.com/ to read the excerpt, or buy a copy of the book. I'm proud to say that 15% of the proceeds will go to the Alzheimer's Society, so go check it out.

From inception to completion, Losing Dominion took me three years to finish. It began as an idea I had in the middle of the night, and it kicked around in my head for months before I finally put a pen to paper. In the end, I must have gone through almost a thousand pages of writing and editing before I was able to finish my book, sitting at a humble 130 pages. I'm insanely proud of it, with all its strengths and weaknesses. I find that the quote, "Art is never finished, only abandoned," now resonates with me; it wasn't easy to close the book and send it off to print.

I got very lucky in many things for this book to get published. I am grateful that my family was so supportive throughout the process, and that Denise was so patient as I wrote (although in the Acknowledgments section at the back of the book, when I thanked her last of all, she said "well that just shows you don't love me"). I was fortunate enough to have duped Lindsay Vermeulen into designing the fantastic cover of the book, which will no doubt lure in the masses (please message me to contact her for your own graphic design needs). I'm also lucky that I was able to use my grandfather's beautiful painting for the art on the cover. I have brilliant friends who were able to provide detailed, ass-kicking feedback on the original drafts, and that most definitely saved me a great deal of embarrassment. Finally, I am ridiculously grateful that my sister Jocelyn agreed to be my publicist/agent/PR person, and that she carefully crafted the book's publication so that it didn't look like the angsty creation of a prepubescent high-schooler.

The next step is to send the book in to actual publication houses, which I will be doing shortly with the help of Joss. So we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I hope you'll buy my book. If not, please at least download the free excerpt.

Please check it out. Thank you.