Victoria S. Winters's Blog
December 6, 2013
The Pilot by Victoria Winters
Hello, everybody!
First of all I would like to apologise for any grammar mistakes I’ve made, because English is not my first language and I don’t have a personal editor at the moment.
If you haven’t yet heard about my book “The Pilot”, which I’m sure that you haven’t, I would like to give you some information about it. I will start with how it all started.
I’ve always wanted to become a writer (probably since I was five). I started with stories for children, my own fairy tales and than I moved to supernatural stories about ghosts, daemon soldiers and ancient evil things, but I ended up publishing a book about love, loyalty and dreams. Something which I thought would be of an interest to anyone, because it was something real, which can happen to anyone.
At first publishing a book seemed really easy – write your story, give it to the editor, pay the self-publishing company for all kinds of services and come up with an idea about the cover. I thought that my book will hit the shelves and will start selling straight away and since I’m not a patient person, I got really disappointed when after two months I’ve managed to sell only nine copies. I realised that I have take care for my marketing alone and I have to say that it’s easy (such a shame that I have a MA in Marketing, but I have to admit that I wasn’t a bright student).
But I won’t bother you with the things I’ve gone through to promote the book. I think that it will be more interesting to you to read about the book itself and how I came up with the idea for it, rather than my business plan (but if you do, send me a message, I will write another post specially for it).
So…about the idea. As I mentioned earlier, I had many ideas and I didn’t know which one to pick (I still have about 10 more stories with 3 chapters each, but I have’t finished any of it). The idea for “The Pilot” came to me when I was doing my first year at the university. I used to know a guy, who worked for the Bulgarian Air Forces and he was very passionate about what he was doing (he was a crazy driver too). I’ve always admired the work soldiers do (not that I accept war as something normal). Someone has to very brave and has a strong will or character to become a soldier. I’ve watched so many movies and read thousands of articles about what soldiers do, how their families suffer after they lose someone they love and the constant fear of receiving a phone call in the middle of the night. I thought that all these people, who fight for their countries, who are trying to keep the peace and protect all of us, deserved my attention and not just mine, but everybody’s attention. And after I watched one of the RAF (Royal Air Force) shows, I literary lost my words (I’m not sure if that’s the correct phrase). They were amazing. One needs a great concentration and years of training to become a pilot. That’s when I decided that my fist book will be about someone, who’s dream is to become part of RAF.
I wanted to find out more about the life they live, the habits they have, the education they get, their trainings etc. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to speak to real soldier or a RAF pilot to get their point of view (for which I regret, I should’ve tried to arrange an appointment with someone), but I’ve read a lot of interviews, which were very helpful. I had to do a lot of research in order to make my book as realistic as I can. Although I think that I’ve done a good job, I’m sure that there are many things that I’ve missed and I apologise for it.
The idea of my book was not only to show how the soldiers live or what they are going through, while they are serving the country. It was also to show that no matter how many mistakes you’ve done, how many people you’ve hurt in your life, there’s always a chance for you to change, to have a new beginning. Even when you feel that you’ve lost everything there’s hope that your life will get better and no matter how far you’ve gone from the path you wanted to follow, there’s a chance to achieve what you’ve always wanted as long as you don’t give. Oh yes…let’s not forget about love.
I hope that you will enjoy reading my book.
Here’s the first chapter:
