Last month I completed and published my first novel. It’s called “Gorp: Goblin Janitor” and is a fun fantasy novel I wrote during the 2010 NaNoWriMo competition. The book was written in 30 days, while I was working a full-time job in Arizona. I finished the 50k word deadline and had my manuscript, where it sat and await a rewrite and edit that never came until this year (2017). I never mentioned in the book or elsewhere, but all the artwork for the book was created by myself as well.
In 2011, after having written my first novel, I was looking for another self-challenge. That year, I decided to do a fantasy related drawing/art piece every single day of the year and called it “Drawing a Day”. It was very hard at times while working 16 hour days at work and having a young child to take care of, but I was able to accomplish this feat giving me 365 original works of art at the end of the year. While, drawing I sometimes took the opportunity to draw up characters and places from my Gorp novel and planned to use these for each chapter in the final book. I was contacted by a French magazine/book publisher and ended up having all of my art published in their magazine “Collections: Volume 3” with an interview as well. In addition to these, there were a few chapters that did not have what I wanted, so I drew these just for the novel right before publishing.
After moving around and spending sometime in Hollywood, I eventually ended up in Sydney, Australia where I currently reside. Having the time to dedicate to my finished manuscript, I worked on the rewrite and edit for the novel, which went much better than I had anticipated. The self-publishing world however was a bit of a hassle trying to navigate. After a step learning curve I was able to get all the pieces put together with a new book cover and convert the paperback version over to eBook. Now begins the long task of selling my book and trying to get it out there for others to read. To date, it’s still be less than a month since my book was first published and I’ve not year sold my initial goal of 10 books, but I have sold a few copies, which gives one hope. Diving into the fantasy world I created for Gorp, ignited my imagination and love for writing again, so I’ve begun the task of turning Gorp into a series and am currently preparing to write the second book in the series. Being a book author was one of those childhood dreams and today as I sit here typing this from Australia, I feel very accomplished, but still yearn to create fantastical worlds for others to explore through reading.
Gorp: Goblin Janitor (goodreads.com)
To order the book directly click here.
