I've spent the last three years realizing a dream I've had for at least thirty years, becoming a published novelist. Now I'm in the process of getting the work out in both hard copy and e-book format and I'm a little lost in space, but as everyone knows, marketing is the hardest part. The title, River of Gold, refers to a country western song and is the first my heroine has ever heard of the late country star, Tom DeVries. The story is briefly encapsulated on the back of the novel as seen above. The cover design is mine also.
I don't feel the sense of accomplishment that others expect me to feel. There's no finality in this moment. When I received the first 150 copies of my book from Black Rose Writing out of Castroville, Texas, I knew that this was just the beginning of what I hope to be a new career. Another surprising statement I hear from other writers is what hard work writing is. Discovering myself as a creative writer has given me a freedom of expression I've never had before. None of what I did, from research, first drafts and the massive amounts of rewriting and all the stuff I had to dump, ever felt like "hard work". I had my moments of dispair, knowing that writing a book, even with confidence that I could write a good one, wouldn't mean a thing if I couldn't sell it as a good read and myself as an author with a unique voice. The actual writing process, although frustrating at times, is a source of great joy for me and I think it shows in the quality of the writing.
My new novel, Peyote Vision, is a project I've been working on for a year. Everything I learned from writing River of Gold has made the process even more fluid and joyful. The story is based on my experiences as a hitch-hiking hippie in Montana and Idaho in 1982. The political situation at the time was sizzling with tension over the proliferation of armed nuclear missles all over the U.S. For authenticity, I've been reading issues of the 1982 Missoulian I was able to recieve through an inter-library loan. The microfiche machine is kind of a dinosaur and a bit of a physical strain to operate but the rewards are astonishing. You know you're on the right track with a creative process when the universe drops in to assist you. I've made discoveries about characters and situations I knew of that I'd been unaware of before. I also had an accidental moment watching a TV documentary about Glacier National Park that added even more depth and interest to my story.
No, I'm not going to give it away just yet. I'm still putting the pieces together and won't release the actual plot until I'm reasonably sure what it is. Until then, River of Gold is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other e-book sites to numerous to mention. It pays to have a publisher behind you.
