When I was 17 years old, I dropped out of high school. Unenthused by school, I found a job at the local Supermarket, in the meat department, packing and stocking meat for the Supermarket shelves. Life for me then, was parties, work and shopping!

At 24, I found myself, newly divorced with a baby daughter to raise alone, with no job and no qualifications. I struggled for the first few years, until finally, I realised, I could not carry on trying to balance working as a Secretary full time and attempting to be the equivalent of two full time parents. So I began to study again. After completing a qualification, I gained a job as an IT Lecturer at AUT University. I continued to study and work full time, whilst balancing motherhood. It has very hard work, exhausting.

One night, I had a dream about a girl who found a mysterious artefact belonging to her brother. Near the end of the dream, the girl ended up on another planet. I recounted the story to a colleague at work the next day and she said, “Wow! It sounds amazing! You should write it down.” At the time, I laughed it off, but she was insistent and even said that if I didn’t write it down, she would!

So over the University holidays, I wrote the whole book out. The words just seem to pour out onto the page. It took six weeks to write. I took the draft manuscript to my colleague and asked her to read it. At the time, I didn’t have any experience of creative writing and there were lots of bits in the story that didn’t quite add up. I edited the book on and off for the next five years (yes editing takes much longer!!), while I read books about how to write, went to writing workshops, joined author groups, read novels as widely as I could, and generally boosted my creative skills.

Eventually, I plucked up the courage to send my book to a commercial publisher, who assigned it to a reader. The news wasn’t great, the market in New Zealand was too small to make a profit off the book, the story was clunky, etc, etc. I knew it was a good story, so at the publisher’s suggestion, I tried the US market and tried to get an agent in New Zealand. All to no avail. Then the recession hit, and I just knew any chance I had of getting published now, was even further reduced. Someone told me that less than 3% of new authors ever get published, so I figured the odds weren’t worth the effort of endless rejection letters.

I had always been a fan of the Tony Robbins ‘Get the Edge’ CDs, and I had vowed that one day, I would go to one of his seminars and see him as a Trainer, in person. When Tony came to Sydney in mid 2011, I looked at the cost of going to the conference. It was going to cost about $10,000 for a week. I was really tempted to go. I had a good job by this time, and I could have stretched my budget and splashed out. Plus my wonderful (new) husband offered to give me his savings, because he knew how much I wanted to see Tony Robbins!

I slept on it over many nights, playing with the idea of going, but I couldn’t bring myself to take my husband’s money and then go away without him! At some point, I decided I could self publish my book for the same cost or less, and then my book would be in print! I had read many books about the dilemma of ‘vanity’ publishing and I knew that it would be hard work. I also knew that my job as a Sales Trainer, had given me a huge skill set that I could draw on for launching a successful marketing plan with confidence.

I took the plunge. It was fun getting quotes and talking to people about all the things I needed to set up. The website, the graphic designer, getting an IBSN number, and so forth. It was certainly a lot more positive, than waiting for ‘no’ letters to turn up in the mail! I did all my sums and worked out that with my first print run, if I sold every copy of my book, I would break even. I also knew, that making any profit on top of that, would come from e-marketing, so I also read widely about digital marketing. I especially enjoyed the author, Jonathan Fields, who wrote Career Renegade, about tribal networking. Fascinating concept!

So here we are, about to launch the book at a fabulous internet café in Auckland that has a very apt setting for the book theme.

Watch this space for news of how the book goes and for the sequel!

Oh and… please buy the book and… enjoy!!

Regards

Karen R Whittaker