I am a Writer.. and apparently More

I am a Writer.

And apparently more now.

As some may or may not know in 2024 I left my publisher and went the independent publishing route. I started up Little Dog Press with the thought to only publish my own personal books…

But how’s that saying go? “You plan and God laughs”?

And well, yes he did.

You see it got out that I was publishing my own books and someone asked me to ‘help’ them publish a cookbook for charity. Should have been easy. All I can say is I completely understand now while publishers take eight-five percent of the royalties.

Publishing someone else is complicated and stressful. When as a writer all you want to do is create your own stories for others, taking works and making them something readers can enjoy steals a lot of time. People can be hard to please, and co-operation is hard to come by. Learning you can’t please all the people all the time is harsh.

And when in the end the final product, while well crafted and desired by people, fails to launch as hoped, there’s a deep sense of… loss. A lot of questioning about abilities. Self-doubt. And the self-doubt creeps into the basic question about am I a good writer.

This isn’t to say there were no positives in the adventure. While sharp, the learning curve carried me a to a whole new set of skills, opened me up to the possibilities of doing it again. Though, probably not a cookbook. And it added something to my resume. Traditional, small press publisher.

I will now say with some pride, if but quietly… I am a publisher.

Even if in my heart I will always just be a writer.

So until next time

Write On.