It's here. Moon Girl is a whole year old. My Author career is a whole year old. On the 3rd of January 2017 my first book Moon Girl 1: Moon Rise hit Amazon. It's been a hell of a year since.
(If your on this post for the giveaway, feel free to skip reading and just comment 'Hi' at the bottom or something I don't mind. If you're worndering 'What giveaway? I can have free stuff?' Go to the Giveaway page for more details.)
I've sold a grand total of 34 copies of Moon 1 and 2 with 4453 pages read by people using kindle unlimited. Their not grand numbers but that's not why I wanted to publish. I'm happy with what I achieved through my first year as an author. Moon Girl has had some good reviews and bad reviews. If it has so much as put a smile on one person's face I'm happy.
Publishing had been an interesting journey that I've learned a lot from. As much as I did my research beforehand I still went in a newbie, stumbling around the self-publishing world. I don't feel like I have the time of at the moment to put in all the effort I know it will take to really take my marketing to the next level but I hope in 2018 that I don't stumble as much, my aims are to get a bit more organised with things...hopefully.
My writing and my aprach to writing has changed dramaticlly since first writing Moon Girl 1. I never used to be able to write a full story. I would show my friends chapter by chapter to get reassurance that it was making sense and was somewhat good. Then I finished the first draft of Moon Girl. Honestly, I've improved so much just over one year that I'm not fussed on Moon Girl 1 anymore, I wish I could re-write it but at the same time, if I hadn't gone and published it I don't think I would be able to say that, I don't think my skills would have risen to the point I could look at it that objectively.
I'm not sure when it changed but with Moon Girl 2 I could suddenly write a full book fairly quickly. I had the confidence all of a sudden to finished the first draft without anyone else seeing it, without anyone helping to push me along. Then writing Moon Girl 3 I started to realise how important it was to keep my flow when writing, how little things like a bad keyboard or stopping to check spelling can kill my flow. At that point, I changed from simply being confident enough to finish a story to never wanting to show people my first draft. Not because it was bad, just that it would be full of spelling mistakes I hadn't bothered to correct.
It boggles my mind looking back to think those changes only happened in a year, and I've got taking that publishing step to thank for it. I have all the support from my friends, family and writing group to thank for it. I've got Mewa Chu to thank for help with the covers and anyone who picked up Moon Girl to thank for it.
I hope to carry on through 2018 bringing more books, more blog posts and maybe even attending more events through the year. Thank you to everyone who had supported Moon Girl and my books!
