Promoting Yourself is Weird

It is by far my least favorite part of being a writer. One would think a creative person would be great at creating marketing campaigns but one would be wrong. It's a silly endeavor, really.

You usually start by asking yourself what you're willing to do to break through the tremendous amount of noise already crowding the social media space, let alone the publishing one. What makes my book different than the others out there? Well, to be honest, next to nothing. It is, to put it simply, only different because I wrote it.

That all being said, I am proud of the story I wrote and I don't know how else to get it out there but to talk about it, and myself, like I'm some egotistical alien. I get that my approach is different than most. You'll never see me posting my face on Instagram stories and I'm never going to create drama to get views. So pardon me if I invade your socials with book covers and reminders of upcoming release dates. I promise to continue the incessant food posts too.

What's "Poison Devils?"

In 2019 I went back to college to get my Master's Degree in Creative Writing. It was a lovely journey I enjoyed more than any other school experience.

I had no intention of becoming a teacher, which is the usual path for someone who wants to and achieves this form of degree. My goal was more altruistic.

In truth, I just needed strangers to read my writing.

While I absolutely value the opinions of my friends and family, how does one really know if you're good at a thing unless you share it with people who are fairly anonymous (it was an online-only course) and who will never have to see your face while they tell it you suck at the thing you love doing most. Also, how convenient to have a captive audience who have no other choice but to read your work or fail out of a course.

Was that an expensive endeavor just to know you're on the right path when you know you're going to do it anyway? Certainly. Do I have any regrets? Nope.

One of my favorite parts of the writing process is idea generation and the subsequent research that follows. For my screenwriting class, I had three big ideas. Write a screenplay based on the Hell on Earth series (my first major writing accomplishment, four books worth of NaNoWriMo words currently posted on this site), a new story based on the Bon Jovi song Living on a Prayer, or this story.

Originally titled "Skin," "Poison Devils" is about reluctant heroes, harsh truths, and complicated relationships. It was born out of my love for tattoos, my need to always put myself and my disability into my characters, and my love for YA dystopian novels and sci-fi/fantasy films. I wrote the first 30 pages as a screenplay to satisfy my class requirements but always knew I would expand it into a novel. In November of 2019, I participated in NaNoWriMo once again and did just that.

What began as a 50,000-word story then expanded into a 175-page novel with a new title and a Matrix-inspired cover. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com or on my site as a 'pay what you can' option which will get you the PDF version you can access anywhere, anytime.

Thanks, as always, to anyone who reads my stuff, whether it be here or my other blog or on my socials or the books I shove in your faces.