Anna Webb's Blog

I am very excited to announce that the sequel to Into the Between is now available on Amazon!

 

Beyond the Between

 

He can see what is yet to come.

She is haunted by echoes of the past.

Their fates are bound by the power of their Gifts.

 

After winning the Elemental Trials, Allyra believes she has won her freedom. In truth, she has only played her part in the opening moves of a game that started long before her time. In order to discover the truth of the Betrayal, an event which irrevocably changed the history of the Gifted, Allyra must delve deeper into the unforgiving and brutal world of the Gifted. She must participate in the Five Finals, a competition where death isn’t just possible, but expected.

 

As she gets closer to the truth of the Betrayal, and the part that Alex played in it, she realizes that nothing comes without a price. Even as her power grows, Allyra must decide just how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice in her quest for the truth.

 

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Recently I read an article about the cost of getting a PhD. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking – not the cost of college fees, but rather the far more terrible cost of mental health.

The article had some pretty shocking statistics about how many graduate students struggle with depression and while I was lucky enough not to go through a such an experience while getting my PhD in Chemical Engineering, it got me thinking about balance in general and work/life balance specifically.

Balance is an interesting concept and not an easy one to attain. Certainly as I write this at 4am, I’m sure there’s a certain irony that my tired mind is too tired to grasp at this point in time…

Juggling is something most engineers learn very early in their careers – most of us have to keep many balls in the air: a demanding career, a fierce drive to succeed, relationships, friends, family… The list goes on…

I’m certainly no different, except that I decided to add writing to my already long list of things to do. I’ve always loved reading and writing my own book was always something I really wanted to do, but never seemed to get around to. Finally, with some prodding from my husband, I finally got it done, and in September this year I published my YA fantasy novel Into the Between. But in the process of doing so, I suddenly found myself wondering if perhaps I had just too many balls in the air and whether they might all come crashing down around my ears at some point.

Since starting my career as a chemical engineer, I’ve had one firm rule: leave work at work. And in following this rule, I’m managed to maintain a fairly good work/life balance. However, writing Into the Between brought up a feeling that I hadn’t felt since my years as a graduate student – all-consuming self-doubt.

Sometimes I think that self-doubt is the thing that made me push myself that much harder, the thing that kept me in the laboratory late into the night, all in an effort to succeed. It may have been the thing that ultimately drove me to finish my PhD, but it has never been a comfortable thing to bear and I believed that I’d left it far behind – until I tried to write a novel.

But that brings me back to my concept of balance. I’m older and wiser now than when I was studying and I know that I won’t succeed at everything I do, no matter how much I want it.

I know that of all the people that might read Into the Between, not all of them will like it, perhaps some of them will simply detest it. But that’s ok.

The lesson I learnt while studying, one that I apply to this day is balance. My friends and family have taught me that. They taught me the importance of understanding my own limits and also the importance of just letting go and having fun – which, believe me, doesn’t always come easily to most engineers!

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: find your own balance. I won’t try and tell you how to do it, different things work for different people. But most of all, define your own success! Certainly don’t allow others to do it for you.

So I wanted to talk about the necessities when one intends to self-publish:

Write the book (Done!)
Editing
Book cover art
Website
Marketing
Other bits and pieces (Copyright, ISBN etc.)

One piece of advice – if you’re planning to self-publish, these are all things you should consider well ahead of publishing! I wasn’t nearly as organized…

Unfortunately, all of the above cost money and for me, writing was always something I wanted to do for myself, and while my husband has always been incredibly supportive, this was not an endeavor that I was willing to throw tons of money at.

Now, writing the book doesn’t cost anything – well, nothing but time and small bits of sanity.

But once the writing is done, a budget becomes necessary. And because mine was tight (especially considering most of the services I required were hosted in the USA and I live in South Africa with a constantly depreciating currency), I had to consider what I wanted to spend it on…

My plan is to go through each point and give a view of my experiences – I’m not an expert in any way, this is simply what I found out during my personal journey to self-publishing.

First up is editing.

The first thing to know is that there are actually many types of editing:

Content editing – as the name suggests, this looks at the content of your writing. Characterization, pacing etc.
Copy editing – this will look at how you write. Grammar, punctuation will all be considered here.
Proofreading – a final run through the manuscript looking for typos

So, it’s really up to the writer to decide what type of editing is required and often, more than one round of editing may be required. Another important thing to note is that editing is often subjective, at least content editing is, so it’s important to get a sample edit done to see if the editor is a good fit for you.

For more (professional) information:

Jane Friedman’s blog
The Creative Penn

More to follow…

What’s not to love? The ocean, beautiful beaches, Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, wine farms…

One of the major advantages of living in South Africa is the large, open spaces. This has meant that I’ve always been lucky enough to have a canine companion. I’ve had Alsations, German Shorthaired Pointers, a Toy Poodle, a Chow Chow, a beagle as well as a couple of dogs of questionable heritage. They’ve all had their very own personalities, from fun-loving goofballs to the super-smart. But most of all, they’ve all been unwavering loyal and I’ve loved each one.

Our current set has a tennis ball obsession. Just the sound of a tennis ball bouncing on the ground is enough to drive them into a flurry of frantic whining coupled with acrobatic leaps.

They can also be trusted to dig up every flowerbed. They watch us work in the garden, with their heads cocked to the side, doing their best to figure out what we’re doing. As far as I can make out, they’ve decided that we’re hiding some splendid things in the garden. And as soon as our backs are turned they go investigating, digging up every single plant with gleeful joy.

The Magic of Africa

Living in South Africa means that I’m spoilt for choice in this regard. The Kruger National Park is famous world over as a destination of choice when viewing wildlife in its natural environment. There, from the safety of your vehicle you can see quizzical zebra, embarrassed wildebeest, elegant sable and a whole host of other antelope. And you’d be pretty unlucky not to see at least two or three of the famous “Big Five” of lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard.

The term ‘Big Five’ (according to Wikipedia) was apparently coined by big game hunters for the animals that were the most difficult to hunt on foot. I’m not suggesting this isn’t true. Personally, I love seeing these animals from the safety of my car, but do a random search on Youtube and you’ll find any number of videos that will convince even the bravest amongst us why it would be a terrible idea to come face to face with one.

In any case, it’s always seemed like a rather random term to me, and I rather preferred the ‘Secret Seven’ (natgeotv.com/asia/africa-secret-seven...), which are the most secretive (and therefore most hard to find) animals of the African veldt. These include the serval, aardvark, pangolin, genet, African wildcat, civet and porcupine. I have visited the Kruger National Park on over twenty occasions and I’ve only seen five of the Secret Seven and I count myself lucky to have seen that many. It probably has something to do with my husband who is an expert spotter of wildlife, able to beat out even the most canny-eyed game ranger.

In fact, we were once on a night-drive with some tourists from Germany and the Netherlands and during the course of the two and a half hour drive, my husband managed to point out many rhinos grazing in the dark, some black backed jackals out hunting and finally a leopard. At the end of the drive, one of the tourists turned to my husband in wide-eyed wonder and thanked him, telling him that he was even better than the game ranger! Now, this was perhaps a bit unfair as I’m sure the game ranger would’ve spotted all of the animals, he was perhaps not quite as quick given the fact that he had to actually drive the vehicle…

On top of all the four-legged animals, the Kruger is filled with a variety of beautiful birds. The call of the fish eagle will always be, in my mind, one of the quintessential sounds of the African bush.

We are lucky today to be able to see these wonderful animals in the wild, and hopefully we will continue to do so long into the future. However, there are those whose efforts in conservation are key to our continued enjoyment of these animals. I have been lucky enough to visit some of these:

Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (www.moholoholo.co.za): A home to many injured and rescued animals and key in educating the public on wildlife. Perhaps its most famous resident is Stoffel the Honey Badger (have a look at his amazing antics here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c36UNSoJenl)
Eagle Encounters at Spier Wine farm (www.eagle-encounters.co.za): Promotes conservation and education related to birds of prey.

I love reading – it’s really that simple. My parents have fostered my love of reading from an early age, to quote my mother: Money spent on books is money well spent.

Some kids have forts built of cardboard boxes; mine was built from books, from Enid Blyton to C.S. Lewis.

These days I’ll read just about anything, but there’ll always be a special place in my heart for fantasy fiction. Through the power of these books, I’m transported into magical new worlds; anything from dystopian futures to ethereal worlds inhabited by elves and dragons.

I find it hard to list my favorite books, it is ever changing, but here are some:

Sabriel by Garth Nix (garthnix.com). Sabriel is the first of the Old Kingdom series with a strong, yet wonderfully real female protagonist.
The Scorpio Games by Maggie Stiefvater (www.maggiestiefvater.com). This is a new addition to my list, but the haunting power of Maggie Stiefvater’s writing is utterly captivating and you certainly wouldn’t go wrong by checking out her Raven Cycle series either.
The Blue Sword by Robin Mckinley (robinmckinley.com). I had a hard time deciding between this and another of Robin Mckinley’s books The Hero and the Crown, both feature strong female protagonists, but ultimately the Blue Sword won out, perhaps because it’s the first of her books that I read.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (patrickrothfuss.com). This is a massive and utterly satisfying book, completely impossible to put down. So perhaps don’t start it – as I did – late at night because then you’d been in for a sleepless night… The awesomeness of this book and the related series is shown by how faithful the fans have been despite the long wait to the third and final book.
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (amiekaufman.com). This book is awesome, and is more than just a normal book, it is an interactive experience. The entire story is told through hacked documents including emails, interviews and medical reports. It is wonderfully imaginative with heart-pounding pacing.

So – for many years I was one of the very many people (according to some statistics) that thought: I have a book in me. After making that grandiose statement on multiply occasions, my husband got tired of hearing it and told me to just ‘go ahead and write it.’

Easier said than done…

In any case, after many long months of writing in stolen moments on weekends and late at night, in between my 8 – 5 job (on paper) as a chemical engineer, which in reality was more like a 6 – 6 job, I finally got the thing written. At the time, I thought it was just about the greatest thing I’d ever been able to achieve. Little did I know that getting ninety thousand odd words on paper was really only the beginning, and the hard work was just about to start.

The Internet is a great source of information when someone is looking to get his or her book published. However, it is also full of helpful warnings to potential authors trying to divert them from the possibly painful road to publishing. I did my homework and took the time to read lots of blogs, hints and warnings, but filled with the glow of having actually written a book and a good dose of optimism I decided to ignore all the warnings and proceed headlong towards publishing.

Now, the first thing you have to do when trying to get published in the traditional sense is to get yourself a literary agent, this is done by sending out lots of query letters. Many of the above mentioned warnings are regarding the sheer volume of rejection that you must be prepared to submit yourself to. Seriously – it is masochistic levels of torture. There are many stories about authors who have sent out hundreds of query letters and received rejections in reply (if you’re lucky) or simply no reply at all.

I didn’t quite reach those levels; in fact, the truth is, I gave up rather quickly, having only sent out about twenty odd query letters. And I don’t want to put any budding authors off, so let me say that most of the rejections were very kind, and generally encouraging. Nonetheless, I decided I’d had enough. An argument may be made that my pride simply couldn’t take it and I’m pretty sure that’s not too far from the truth, but I like to tell myself that it was rather because I hated the long waiting periods. Some of the literary agents make it clear that due to the sheer volume of queries they receive that it takes them a couple of months to reply. That just seemed way too long to me. After all, I’d written the book and I wanted it published – as soon as possible (as you might imagine, I was still blissfully ignorant at this point).

So, I turned to self-publishing.

I’ve been a faithful customer of Amazon.com for many years and I knew of the Kindle Direct Publishing program which, along with many similar platforms had made it possible for many aspiring authors to fulfill their dreams of publishing. And to be honest, the idea of self-publishing rather appealed to the obsessive-compulsive control-freak within me. Having total control over the entire book from end to end, cover to cover sounded awesome (at least it did at the time).

In any case, after that rather long and sprawling introduction, I thought I’d use this blog to chronicle my experience with self-publishing. The road thus far has been long and meandering, in fact that’s a bit of an understatement. In reality, it has been filled with missteps and potholes the size of which you’d only find in Africa…

 

Some of my favorite resources for self-publishing related information:

https://janefriedman.com Jane Friedman’s blog is filled with information regarding the publishing industry, both the traditional and self-publishing routes. There’s also plenty of information for authors in general.
thebookdesigner.com Similarly this is an all-encompassing site of information related to publishing. My favorite part is the e-book cover design awards, which shows great e-book covers as well as constructive critique on what not to do…