This blog post is a little late but I thought better late than never so here goes…
January 25th 2018 was quite literally one of, if not THE best days of my life. It was the day that my debut picture book, “My Colourful Chameleon” came out in the UK. Though it had been released in the US at the end of 2017, the whole thing still didn’t feel real until the book came out in the UK. See below for how thrilled I was. This expression lasted a good week!!
I spent most of the day in a crazied frenzy posting about the book on social media and obsessively watching how it was performing on Amazon. I LOVED every minute of it. I was so excited and it made every minute of the four year (ish) journey to publication worth it. It had happened…people, real people could now buy a copy of MY book, a book that had MY name on it and I can’t tell you how magical this feeling was. I had done it – my dream had come true!!
Around the same time, a huge box arrived containing the copies of “My Colouful Chameleon” that I had ordered for myself…
I MAY have got a little carried away.
Looking back, there was the very real possibility of there being a huge pile of my unsold books in the house for many years to come. (Thankfully I am happy to announce that this won’t be the case – phew!)
When I first set out on my writing journey, a number of people warned me that, “Not many people make it as writers” and that it is “A very hard business to get into”. Of course these people were completely right but as I read more of the thousands of children’s books out there and saw even more of them in the shops, I thought to myself, “Sure, not many people get to be authors but SOME people do”. I didn’t see why I couldn’t be one of those people.
Four years later, I can tell you that it has been a hard slog to publication. I’ve received loads of rejections along the way and have even lost an agent. I’ve written so many versions of certain stories that I’ve sent them to my critique partners under headings such as, “Version seven million and one”. However, if you were to ask me if I would go through the lows again, the answer would be HELL YES because there is no greater feeling than achieving a dream.
So I say to you, If you’ve got a dream then remember that SOME people achieve their dreams and there is no reason why you can’t too! (Within reason).
Children's Author 