Earlier this month, on October 7, my first book, Lady in the Fast Lane, commemorated the third anniversary of its self-publishing.
In the three years since I self-published Lady in the Fast Lane, I've learned a lot about writing books, and, to put it mildly, I've been through a lot in life.
When I wrote and self-published Lady in the Fast Lane, I was not in the right state of mind. Although I wasn't really aware of it at the time, I was suffering from extreme clinical depression, and I was having suicidal thoughts, while I was writing the book. I was not on any medication whatsoever to treat the mental illness I was suffering from.
When I wrote and self-published the book, I knew extremely little about the book industry. I self-published the book in ebook format only because, at the time, I thought that was the only format books could be self-published in. The only self-publishing distribution service I knew of at the time was PublishDrive. I didn't really give much thought to plot development, character development, or even writing the book with a fiction writing style. I wrote the book, which is a work of fiction, with more of a nonfiction writing style because I didn't know there was a difference between a fiction writing style and a nonfiction writing style at the time.
When I wrote and self-published the book, I wasn't aware that communities for authors and writers, like the writing community on Twitter and the AuthorTube and BookTube communities on YouTube, existed.
I originally intended Lady in the Fast Lane to be the first in a long series of novella-length ebooks titled The Chronicles of Vazkelt. In fact, I had designed a prototype cover for a second book in the series when a couple of things happened at around the same time. First, I realized that I was doing virtually everything about writing and self-publishing a fiction book wrong, and I abandoned the series after the first book. Second, many things in my life changed within a matter of months.
A little less than three months after I wrote and self-published Lady in the Fast Lane, after the start of the new year 2020, my mother had to be hospitalized due to a life-threatening illness. What started out as an episode with kidney stones turned into total inflammation, infection, and blockage of both her urinary tract and colon. She was hospitalized for an extended period of time, and, during surgery, it was discovered that a non-malignant tumor had swollen so badly, it blocked her colon, and this necessitated the creation of a stoma, thus necessitating the usage of a colostomy bag. Several months later, she was able to have the stoma reversed, and she no longer needs a colostomy bag.
While my mom was still recovering at home from her medical episode, I found my father dead in his garage. I'm not going to go into too many details about my dad's death, although my dad likely died so suddenly, he was probably clinically dead before he collapsed to the garage floor. Although I've not been formally diagnosed with PTSD, I still fear to this day that the same thing could happen to my mom or me. I've had to take on a lot of responsibilities around the house that my dad did prior to his death.
Additionally, my mom is not in good health. While she's fully recovered from the kidney stones and inflamed non-malignant colon tumor episode, she has COPD from decades of smoking cigarettes that she stopped doing earlier this year, and she struggles to walk because of collapsing discs in her spine. I spend a lot of each day taking care of my mother and helping her with tasks around the house that are not easy for her to do.
Not long before my dad died, I finally sought mental health care after months upon months of severe depression and suicidal thoughts. I take a prescribed antidepressant called citalopram daily, and this improved my life greatly. I still struggle with depression episodes from time to time, although they aren't as frequent or severe as they were before I started my antidepressant regimen. Additionally, I haven't had suicidal thoughts in nearly two years.
My mom and I have had some medical episodes since my dad's death. In addition to the numerous health problems my mom has, about two years ago, my mom became unconscious suddenly and fell off of a scaffold that was being used as a makeshift bed for her in the living room of our house. Thankfully, she didn't suffer any life-threatening injuries, although she suffered a mild closed head injury that has long since healed. She no longer needs the scaffold for a bed, thankfully. I've been in the emergency room twice for kidney stones in the past year and a half. Last month, my mom and I were involved in a motor vehicle crash that resulted in the pickup truck my parents drove for 22 years being totaled after my mom had a COPD flareup behind the wheel and passed out.
I have spent the last three years doing a lot less writing work than I've wanted to, but I've spent a lot of time learning about the book writing and self-publishing processes. I've learned that there is more than one self-publishing distributor that I can use. I've learned that it is possible to self-publish print books and audiobooks in addition to ebooks. I've learned a lot from the AuthorTube community on YouTube, and I've become part of the AuthorTube community myself. I've started a podcast about writing-related topics and have interviewed numerous fellow authors. I've learned a lot about how to write, format, and edit books. I've learned a lot about important aspects of fiction writing, such as plot development and character development. I've also learned a lot about topics that have helped make me a better author, such as worldbuilding, constructed languages, and graphic design.
Being an author has been far more of a learning experience for me than I could have ever imagined. When I was in grade school and high school, I never wanted to be an author, and English was one of my worst subjects in school. I knew when I dropped out of community college after completely failing as an accounting major that I wanted to do something in life outside of the accounting and bookkeeping world. I became an author partly out of desperation and partly out of curiosity, and I wouldn't trade the experience of being an author for anything. I hope to self-publish more books in the near future, and I promise that books I publish going forward will be a lot better than Lady in the Fast Lane.
In honor of the third anniversary of the publishing of Lady in the Fast Lane, you can buy Lady in the Fast Lane for only 99¢ USD on Amazon Kindle!
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