Category: James Alexander

Posts about me, author James Alexander

It’s done!  I uploaded my story, “Conduit: The Beginning”, to Amazon yesterday.  I had a lot of questions related to posting my work to Amazon and other platforms.  Many blogs out there have advice on why to self-publish through the Kindle or other platforms such as the Nook, but I had a hard time finding any step by step directions and tips on how to do it.

I really didn’t want to look like a fool and make some stupid mistake.  I’ve written my story, gone through countless edits, and even worked to get a nice cover.  The last thing I wanted to do was send it out there for the first time with problems.  I scoured the internet looking for tips on how to proceed and most of the time I would find conflicting advice from one blog to the other resulting in aggravation and bad headaches.

Hoping to save others the cost of several bottles of Tylenol, I decided to devote some of my blog to explaining the steps to getting a story out on Amazon and show some of the issues I ran into along the way.  I will be categorizing my tips under the category labeled “Self-Publishing Tips”.

I already mentioned how I hoped to avoid making any silly mistakes with posting my story.  I haven’t said yet that I already did make a silly mistake.  As I anxiously waited for my story to move from the review stage to the publishing stage, I wondered why it was taking so long.  As it turns out, I checked everything twice to make sure I had everything correct before hitting the submit button to send my story for review.  What I hadn’t checked was where I was supposed to enter my name as the author.  Needless to say, I felt brilliant after realizing why Amazon ended up sending my story back to the draft state for resubmission.

So there is my first tip for submitting a story to Amazon as commonsensical as it sounds.  Make sure the author’s name field is completed.

Now, I’ll cross my fingers once again and anxiously wait for my story to magically appear on Amazon.com!

I am very excited about the thought of releasing my book “Conduit” on Amazon in the very near future. Yes, a little nervous, OK a lot nervous, but still excited. I hope that people will enjoy my story as much as I enjoyed writing it. So with my energy high, I made the mistake of opening up my web browser and searching the internet for self publishing tips. Of course I was bombarded with different viewpoints from those expressing how wonderful self publishing is to those telling me only losers self publish. Of course on the one site explaining how I’m loser for self publishing my book, the thought ran by of posting a note explaining how some very famous authors started their career by self publishing but I forced myself to close the window and vent silently causing some indigestion.

Knowing self publishing my story was not going to be easy, I still made the decision to go for it. I had read some articles before making my decision, but not a lot. Just enough to get me knee deep in it. That’s the way I tend to do things. I dig myself a hole, seeing how far I can go and then, in between panting for breath, look up wondering how I’ll get out. I do end up finding a way out at some point, but I always find myself thinking that I should have listened to more advice. But where’s the fun in that?

At this point, I have my story ready to go. The cover is almost ready. I have a website with a blog, a facebook page, and even a google page (which I haven’t had any time to add anything to). In between thinking about how to manage all of these things, I’m thinking about how much more I can spread myself out. After all, who doesn’t want to hear from me? I need to get to everyone! Next up, Twitter so I can tweat like I’ve never tweated before! Watch out Twitter! Oh, I can’t forget I’ll need an Amazon page too.

So here I am, sitting in that hole I dug, taking a breath for a moment, my trusty shovel propped up next to me while I sit and stare up a the clouds above.

I understand now why so many people have tried the self publishing venture and gave up at some point along the way, running back to trying to get a publisher to notice their work – all to finally give up on their dream completely. The fact is though, even if an author finds a publisher to publish their work, this day in age an author cannot afford to skimp out on social applications, or at least new authors can’t. There is still a lot of work an author needs to do even when working with a publisher. Many publishers scour the internet to research authors submitting work, to make sure they have a web presence. My argument to those who shun self published authors is this: Neither route, self publishing or traditional publishing is a walk in the park. Publishing traditionally means that the author may get some boost in marketing power, but self publishing means most profit goes to the author.

There. I’ve proved to myself I’m on the right track. Maybe if I keep digging, I’ll find my way out?

I first started my story “Conduit” with the idea that I wanted to create a new kind of alien invasion story. One, not about green people invading earth or ripping from the chests of helpless victims, but one more about how everyday people would cope with an apocalyptic event involving beings from another world.

With that approach I began thinking about what characters I would want to include. I had an overall base of what personalities would be in the story and even the beginning and the end of my book. I toyed with my idea for some time and went through periods of shelving it to revisiting it later followed by shelving it again. There was a piece missing to it all. How do the aliens invade?

Sure, I could use the standard militaristic invasion, but that whole scenario doesn’t fit with me. My reasoning is this: if aliens are smart enough to have discovered a way of space travel, I would expect that they would have figured out a way to conquer us through other methods then through weaponry. Why not instead use us? Why not find a way to tap into our minds and control us. Discover a way for each of us to pass the alteration ourselves, much like the flu. No warfare would be needed and the world is theirs for the taking.

Stuck on that idea, I shelved my idea once more. I liked it, but I didn’t know how to implement it. That was until I remembered an article I had read some time ago. It was scary to me when I read it:

Zombie Ants (National Geographic)

And that’s when it all came together.

Yesterday, I found this article as well:

Zombie Bees (USA Today).

I find that to be creepy stuff and the creepiest thing of all, it is real. Now what if this could be made in a way to affect humans? Yikes!