Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book? Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
A: When I first self published my manuscript back in 2004 it was titled “When Darkness Falls”. After seeing my manuscript bound and looking like a book (hahaha) my smile quickly turned to sheer terror when I noticed that my book was still filled with grammatical errors. I had just paid the editor (whom was recommended to me by the same printing place) a great deal of money only to take the editors word for it that everything was taken care of. I was eighteen at the time and with little to no help or experience, I went on this venture on my own. I know now that I should have checked my manuscript before signing away my approval to go to print, but what did I know? So I gave the go ahead and realized only after the books were bound the errors that still remained. I had just paid a small fortune for the printing of my book and to have them reprinted would have cost me a fortune. Not to mention my first book launch was two days away!
A lot has happened since then and the editors I have had since that very first editor (which if you ask me got paid to do nothing) have been phenomenal. My writing has matured and grown tremendously because of their constructive criticism and feedback.
Fortunately, I don’t need to look back and wonder if I should have changed or added anything before my book was picked up by a publisher because I made all the changes I wanted to when I was picked up by a literary agent and told to have my work edited. My manuscript, now titled Purged by Darkness (released in June, 2009) went through one final edit just before my publisher officially released it.
I would have to say that I started writing semi-seriously when I was sixteen years old. Writing for me has always been something I enjoyed (still do) and found to be incredibly useful in expressing myself. I used my love for writing to help get me through each and every day.
Writing became especially useful when in my final year of high school I used it as an outlet to escape from the pressures of that final year. Everything in that final year of school that could have gone wrong—did. My relationship with my girlfriend at the time wasn’t doing that great (we ended up breaking up), I was fighting with my parents and I wasn’t doing well in school. I guess skipping school didn’t help!
