Boy Jayck’s Journey

How has it been two months since the launch of my debut novel!? It feels like only yesterday and years ago at the same time! And I cannot thank everyone enough for the amazing comments and reviews I’ve had from it and am looking forward to future ones!

A fellow online writer friend recently asked me; “Did you use beta readers, ARC readers, or both? And what was the timeline you had them on? (How many weeks did you give them to read it?),” and it got me thinking. During the drafting and editing of Boy Jayck, I hadn’t grasped social media marketing yet, nor teasers or updates on my writing, so the journey it took me to publish Boy Jayck is a bit of a mystery to the outside world. I’m an open book, I love to share my experiences with all things in life. So, this question got my brain ticking, and I want to share the journey it took me from writing a fanfiction one day to finding my mentor to self-publishing a book.

Where it all began was, as I mentioned earlier, a fanfiction. My actual writing journey started six months previously after I had quit my job, but Boy Jayck started in May 2022. There was an idea for a long fanfiction brewing in my head at the time. I wrote the first chapter of it and posted it on Archive of Our Own, but it didn’t kick off.

The original RIVA Writing Group Member (Vicky, me, Ruth, and Titi!)

Then a week or so later, I went to my second RIVA Writing Group meeting. After that meeting, I was so inspired. I went home and I took down the fanfiction and wrote seven thousand words and decided Boy Jack (as it was called then) was going to be a book and my first-ever novel! It wasn’t the book I planned to start my writing career with, but it was the book I needed to get out of me, the book I would have read if someone else had written it.

Additionally, at those meetings, I got to know a wonderful writer who was also an editor and ghostwriter, Vicky of Positive Points Editorial Services. She from then on became my mentor, and eight months later she became my editor. She was the person behind the whip driving me forward to finishing my book!

At first, Boy Jayck was going to be two novellas, mostly because I didn’t know what the end was and felt it was the best way for me to start, but with a little encouragement and brainstorming, it was decided it was going to be a novel. I wrote my first outline and new characters were coming into it and stirring up trouble! I loved it! It was so much fun organising the chapters and the points of view changes. Admittedly, it was also a headache, trying to solve my own mysteries and finding solutions to plot holes, but was all par for the course. I was full steam ahead… until December happened.

On Christmas day, 2022, my grandad passed away in his sleep. Me and my mum lived with him, well next door but it was all one house. Despite what you might think, it didn’t stop me writing.

Writing has always been a form of therapy for me, an escape, like writing in a diary. In my writings, you’ll find little pieces of me scattered about. Have you spotted any in Boy Jayck?
It was an escape when I hated my job that was making me cry, I would come home, sit down with a cup of tea, and lose myself in fanfiction, either reading one or writing one. It was the same with this. I wrote a poem for my grandad, my way of saying goodbye but never to forget. If you have a copy of Boy Jayck, you’ll know I dedicated my debut novel to him, and the day of Boy Jayck’s release was also my grandad’s birthday. He was a massive supporter of all the things I did. He never got to see Boy Jayck finished but I’m sure he’ll be reading it wherever he is now.

January and February were slow going for me, but with Vicky and my mum behind me, I managed to finish writing my first complete draft of Boy Jayck a few days before my twenty-first birthday, 29th of June 2023. If I remember correctly, I made it to eighty-two thousand words! Then I handed it over to Vicky for her skilful eyes to dissect. Boy Jayck was done being edited by mid-September and was at the word count you now know, around seventy-seven thousand words. By Halloween, the proofing copies arrived!

By this time, time was running a little short as you can imagine as we’d already set the date of release to be the 6th of December! So, to answer my friend’s question of did I use beta readers, ARC readers, or both, well I only had beta readers: two friends, another was me, another my mum, and Vicky. By the time we were setting up the KDP page for Boy Jayck we were all cutting it a little thin. The night before Boy Jayck’s manuscript wasn’t allowed to be touched or we wouldn’t be able to get the author copies for my launch party we were still finding errors and little mistakes! To say I was stressing was an understatement, but we did it! (Though there are a few little typos that still managed to get through unseen under our watchful gaze!)

Boy Jayck was pre-order ready; the author copies were on their way; it was all coming together. Then the author copies arrived…

Around two or three days before my launch party the books arrived in a big box. I had ordered thirty books as I’d estimated I’d sell twenty to friends at the party and I wanted some left over. The box however was not in good quality!

It looked as if it had been opened and stuck back together with tape, the books were without any form of protection, no plastic wrapping or bubble wrap or even that brown paper stuff. They were all loose in the box. The tape was visible from the inside and had stuck to three books, ruining them! Only ten in all I would consider sellable, the rest I had to stack, put a plank of wood over and weigh them down with a typewriter so they wouldn’t be so bent! It was gut-wrenching. There I was, seeing the post van, getting really excited to see my book baby in its final stage at last, and for that to happen… Not the best.

My launch party made up for it! Around twenty-plus friends showed up and I sold seventeen books, all signed. Two friends came all the way from England to see me for my launch! (If you don’t know I live in the middle of France.) It was a fabulous evening and one I won’t forget, the amount of support and love that night was intoxicating!

And that was the journey Boy Jayck took me on to get it published! One rollercoaster of a ride!

Thank you for reading up until this point, if you have, please do drop a comment down below! I hope this was an interesting insight into the life of an indie author who is living out her eleven-year-old self’s dream of becoming an author! Thank you so much and I’ll see you next time! See you in the comments!