About a year and a half ago I wrote a blog called “Follow Your Dreams,” and I mentioned a few friends in it, under pseudonyms. Kelly was one of them. Kelly is a talented writer. One day she let me read one of her books that hasn’t been published. Years ago she had put her writing aside to raise her two young boys. Her dream was on hold. One day she was talking about getting a job. It was hard for her with two children and the daily pain she experienced every day from a car accident she had been in years earlier. As we were talking, I asked her why she doesn’t get back to her writing. She has a gift and it was being wasted. The job search didn’t work out, but one night the characters and plot for a novel just came to her. She began writing. Chapter after chapter came to her as she poured her ideas out on paper. She tells me the characters spoke to her and she just wrote down what they told her. Apparently these characters really wanted their stories told because they were relentless.
As Kelly was nearing the end of her book, Breaking Limbo, I was going into selling and buying a house. For the first time in years I was really busy and stressed out. Kelly mentioned she needed someone to edit her book. I didn’t know exactly what an editor does, but I offered to read it and check for grammar, spelling and word choice issues and anything else that didn’t sound right to my ear. She laughed and said that’s what an editor does! In that case I had years of experience editing because I went over all my girls’ college and high school papers. So the work began!
It was easy editing Kelly’s work. She not only writes very well, but her stories just pull you in so much so you don’t want to put them down. Because I was reading and editing at the same time, I could only read a few chapters a day. In a few short days I had gotten it all edited and sent it back to her to review. We worked well together on the revisions and before you knew it, Breaking Limbo was born.
Kelly not only helped her characters to “break” the limbo they were in, but at the same time, in writing this book, Kelly broke her own limbo. Her dream of writing had been suspended for a few years. She had lost her momentum, but never her innate gift to write and let her imagination run away with itself. I am glad she found her way back to writing and has now self-published her first book.
Now comes the promoting and marketing part. We have to get the word out so people will know about the book and hopefully download it or order the print copy. I hope everyone who reads this blog will take a moment to go to Amazon and check it out. Today Kelly got her first review from a reader, on Amazon, and they gave it five stars. It’s well deserved. If you do read the book, will you also take a few minutes to write a review? It would be very much appreciated.
Here is the link where you can download the book for free right now: Breaking Limbo on Amazon
PS Kelly just did a Great Interview which you can read here: Kelly O'Callan Writer's Anarchy Interview
No comments:
Post a Comment