A lot of gears starting turning for me in 2017, winding up for a whirlwind of a year for 2018! It started with my short fantasy story One Wish being published in the Northwest Indiana Literary Journal. Then my memoir Falling Stars was published in Voices, a brand-new literary journal published by the Lubeznik Center for the Arts that featured my photograph “Aftermath” for the cover.
And all that was just the warm-up.
Today is the first of May, the last day I’m twenty-five, and the day A Fallen Hero is officially passed into the hands of my editor. I’m ecstatic to announce that the sci-fan novel finally has a release date! Well, year. That’s right—if all goes smoothly, it will be available through Barnes & Noble by the end of 2018!
I’ve been determined to publish the traditional way, which I viewed as the “correct” way. But as a friend recently put it, if the front door won’t open, knock down the back door. After a frustrating winter sending query letters into the void with nothing to show for the effort, I felt my fire starting to die, especially with the loss of a classmate who passed away suddenly. She reminded me that life is too short and tomorrow isn’t always guaranteed. I decided to stop waiting around for somebody else to make my dream come true. And these past few months after reaching that decision, my fire is burning bright again like it did when I first started writing The Chronicles of Avilésor.
That’s not to say I won’t someday publish traditionally. AFH is the first of an extensively planned series, if it and its sequel are as successful as I know they can be, I might resume querying down the road for later books. But I didn’t start writing to be a famous author. That’d be great, of course, but I write because it’s my passion, and I just want to share my stories.
This 2018 release date became extremely important to me for a strange reason. AFH was officially copyrighted at the end of 2017. For me, this was critical because I’m a tad obsessive about numbers. Specifically, odd numbers. Five and seven are my favorites, so having ©2017 in print was important. My goal from there was to secure an agent in 2018 and publish in 2019, keeping up with my odd digit pattern. But then a new door opened, and I saw a connection written within the book itself like a prophecy. A prophecy that, in fact, involves the numbers seven and eight. A prophecy you’ll have to read in the novel!
So, there you have it! I’m finally breaking this stagnant streak and moving forward. Stay tuned for progress reports as I go through the publication process. I’ll be fine-tuning my cover design and knocking out the legal documentation while AFH is in the capable hands of Nikki at NAM Editorial for the next month or so.
I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.
After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.
That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.
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2 thoughts on “A Fallen Hero Announcement!”
I am happy for you, Sara. You are boldly stepping on your path to make good things happen. You are an inspiration to me.
Yay, this is phenomenal news! So excited!!!
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