Hi everyone.

On 17th July last year I received an email out of the blue from a fiction editor at Amazon Publishing. I had just self-published my first book and was basking in the glory of my first 570 sales. The email said that the editor had loved my book and wanted to talk to me about what I was writing next.

To be honest, I thought it was a joke or worse, a scam. I almost didn’t reply but it turned out to be totally legit and now here I am with a three book publishing deal and just one month to go until my book Postcards From a Stranger is released by Lake Union, an imprint of Amazon Publishing.

It’s been a long year and not without its dramas as I learned more about how the publishing industry works and what I could (and could not) expect to happen. At times things have felt very slow and  more than a little frustrating.

But progress has been made. Postcards is about to emerge. Book 2 The Thing about Clare is complete and just waiting for its cover to be finalised so that it can go into pre-publication marketing. I have written what I hope Lake Union will love as Book 3 and submitted it well before my deadline. I have also written another book and am editing yet another as well as having had a wonderful idea for the book after that so I haven’t been slouching whilst I waited.

This coming week my advance copies of Postcards together with the audiobook version  are due to be delivered here (Giveaways soon so watch this space!) and I will be talking both to my editor about Book 3 and my marketing manager about her plans for pre and post publication. I have also met with ED Public Relations  about the forthcoming promotion of The Thing About Clare.

So it’s safe to say that things are about to start happening. This sense of finally moving forward is really important for me personally. I have found it so hard being in  limbo for the best part of a year – not being able to move forward with my career as an indie author as I intended and yet not quite being able to claim the title of author because I felt like a fraud as there was no book there. So I have made a deal with myself that when we finally get to publication date on 7th August I will FINALLY feel able to celebrate properly and if anyone asks me what I do I will tell them proudly that I AM AN AUTHOR!