Welcome to the fifth and final part of the series on how The Other Side came to be. You can check parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 if you haven’t read them already. But now we come to the close. This is it. Publication.

Where to begin? Well where everything else started at.

Research.

I didn’t know how to publish, though by now I knew I wanted to self-publish. I chose Amazon’s CreateSpace, though at the time they were turning into Kindle Direct Publishing. Once more, I was left alone to go through the process. I had zero idea what I was doing, but did my best to follow the instructions on screen.

So my novel had to be in pdf form, and uploaded onto CreateSpace to be reviewed, which takes 24 hours. In my case, I needed to make a revision when it came back because I, being the highly intelligent being that I am, didn’t proof read the pdf to make sure it was a error free (don’t do this.)

One good thing was that when the interior of my book was reviewed, my formatting was perfect. I had been worried that I had formatted the book improperly. I had to look up to find the way to properly format a self-published book, and the one I used to format mine was off a very old website.

Luckily I had found a new blog that had come out the previous year (2017) and I made adjustments to my document based on that format. Then I sent it in, and the review found nothing wrong which was awesome. I’m sure if I hadn’t second-guessed and decided to re-check the formatting the review would have found an error.

So once the review was done, I had to decide on pricing, and really Amazon chose the price because the one I tried to set it wouldn’t let me do it because of the price it takes to make the book versus how cheap I was trying to sell the book as.

But after it went through all the steps, and once it was fully uploaded, it took two days to appear on the Amazon marketplace.

And then September 12, 2018, my debut novel The Other Side was made available for purchase on Amazon.com as an e-book. And on September 16, 2018 The Other Side was available as a paperback.

I know I said I was “alone” through this process and while in part it was true, I was the one doing the research on my computer, and it was me doing my edits and arranging the book cover design and on and on. But none of what I’ve done would have been possible without the people who supported me along the way.

I was never once told that I couldn’t make it or being a writer was impossible, I never had a single naysayer. Everyone I know and love, everyone in my circle, all were behind me one hundred percent. My mother, my sister, my family and friends, even people I just ended up telling while out in public, my classmates, teachers growing up and a select few college professors, they all believed in me and told me that I could do it.

However the main reason I got through all of it and at the end of eight years of struggle produced a novel was because of God. Any time I changed my mind on what I wanted to write, He somehow turned my attention back to The Other Side. Every time I got distracted or went astray, He led me back to where I was supposed to be. Again and again, God was at my side. It was through God that I made my dream come true.

And for that reason, all praise and glory and honor goes to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I never forget that God’s always been there for me, and if I ever do, He’s quick to remind me. I’m beyond thankful for Him and I’ll continue to write with God’s message of love, mercy, grace and forgiveness in mind.

So, that’s the end of this series of how I published The Other Side. The Other Side is my past and the future is Zippy Mae and the Seven Kingdoms. At the end of the month I’ll post a Written So Far to update my readers where I’m currently at on this work in progress.

See you next time!

And as always, while I write my cat Aomine keeps me company by my side.