Super excited to have Alex Nader visiting today. He's one of J. Taylor Publishing's newest authors. His Beasts of Burdin, an adult urban fantasy, is set for release on Feb 10, 2014. I asked him to share his thoughts on becoming an 'official' new author.
He wrote a short article in the hopes it might inspire / help those of you still waiting on that 'We'd like to offer you a contract for your awesome WiP' email.
Take it away Alex!
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Hi, my name is Alexander Nader and I want to tell you a
little about my journey. I am a married father of three with not one, but two
day jobs. I started to take my writing seriously about two years ago. After
finishing my first novel, which was terribly written in hindsight, I submitted
it to over 60 different agents and publishers all of whom said no or never
responded. So, I wrote a second novel. This one I dialed it back to probably 40
different publishers/agents. I got a little more feedback, but in the end wound
up moving on.
By my third book I was starting to feel comfortable with my
writing. I was learning to avoid some rookie mistakes and really getting into
my characters. I moved away from trying to write what I thought was correct and
writing what I would want to read. All the while I was writing my third book I
was still receiving rejections from publishers/agents from my first two books
(I got a rejection from one publisher a year after I sent the novel to them).
Needless to say, by the time I finished the third book I was
getting pretty discouraged. I sent my third book, Beasts of Burdin, out to 15
publishers and 1 agent. I told myself that if it didn’t get picked up by a
publisher that I wouldn’t even try getting my fourth novel published. I never
wanted to give up writing, it’s too damn fun for that, but I was starting to
think that maybe people didn’t want to read what I had to write.
That’s when I got an email from a publisher that said they
really like what I had going and they wondered if I would be willing to make a
couple changes to tighten up the story. “Of course I would,” I said to my phone
after reading the email. I then sent my wife an excited text message and told
all my coworkers that a publisher thought my story had promise.
The changes the publisher had asked for weren’t that big a
deal. They were mostly things I had thought of when I was planning the story
out and the details just never made their way in to the story. It took a week
to make my changes and email them back to the publisher. I wanted to get it
done in a night, but I was afraid if I emailed the changes back to the
publisher too quickly they would think I didn’t try hard enough.
An hour later I got a response that said the publisher only
signs three book contracts and they wanted to know if I would be comfortable
writing two sequels to Beasts of Burdin. I more or less ran around my job
shouting and shoving my phone into people’s hands for them to read the email. I
calmed down enough to call my wife so that we could jump up and down together
over the phone.
In all of my time writing my wife believed in me. She told
me from chapter 1 of Burdin that this would be the book that would get
published. I have found that with getting a book published you really do just
have to write what you feel good about and hope that you can find a publisher
that feels good about it too. For me that publisher was J. Taylor Publishing.
If you are an aspiring writer who knows who it could be for you and if you are
a writer, go out there and write what you feel. Damn what anyone else might
think. If you are a reader you should probably hop on over to my website and
sign up for updates so you will know when it’s time to read Beasts of Burdin.
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About Alex:
Alex lives in the tourist infested hills of east Tennessee with his amazing wife/muse and three superb children. He would tell you more about how awesome they are, but you probably wouldn’t believe him. When he’s not hanging out with them he’s making pizzas. When he’s not doing that he’s working at a bookstore and occasionally he jots a few words down. He’s a big fan of good music, good storytelling, and mixed martial arts.He once wrote a short story about pirates to his wife via text message that blossomed into a full length novel and never stopped after that.
Blog: alexnaderwrites.wordpress.com
twitter: @alexnaderwrites
facebook: facebook.com/alexnaderwrites
website: alexandernader.com
We writers can be harder on ourselves than anyone else, sometimes. Knowing there's at least one person out there -- a wife, a mom, a friend, whoever -- who believes in us and our stories can make all the difference. (Not that a lot of us could stop writing even if we never submitted another story again, but still.) I'm glad you kept at it, Alex. Best of luck to you!
ReplyDeleteWell, I for one am looking forward to all of them. :-)
ReplyDelete