I have been writing for many years. Only in the last year, have I decided to self publish. Sadly, I have burned more writing then most people have written due to a warped sense of self; as if my work would never be good enough for the public.

As I went through my files, trying to decide what to publish first, I was overwhelmed with the volume of work I still had. Between poetry, short stories, plays, essays and novels I had no idea where to begin. I finally decided to start with a poetry book. It seemed simple enough and there were hundreds to choose from. “Hope in the Well of Angst” was my first effort. It’s a book of fifty poems that range from perceptions and politics to the ridiculous, such as farting.

My choice of POD publisher ended up being Lulu. They offered several packages and my cost was zero. All I had to do was create the document, choose a cover and voila! A book was born. Oh but what a book! First off, I didn’t use a template, so the print only took up a fraction of the page. The size of the book was another issue. I wasn’t sure what size would be best, so I let Lulu decide for me….Not good.

I ordered a book for a friend who had been following my blog (Bindo.wordpress.com) and it was the size of a magazine! God bless Nick, for he still wanted it. I decided to change the size and went for something small; something you could stick in your back pocket and pull out to read while traveling in Europe on the train. It was a nice romantic idea. When that book arrived, it was so small; you needed a magnifying glass to read the print! It dawned on me it might be a good idea to ask some questions. I realized it might also be a good idea to use a template.

After several more attempts, the book did indeed, have a polished look. The majority of my sales, which haven’t been much, came from my blog. Still, I felt good about sending them the finished product and no one has been disappointed. The few sales I had and the solid reviews gave me hope. After letting things run their course, I decided to publish another poetry book. My second attempt, “Passing Through the Ghost” went much smoother. I now knew the pitfalls of POD and the book itself looked great. I played around with the cover image and to my chagrin, miss - spelled the word (the) in the title. I always where my glasses now while working with Photoshop!

I decided to make “Ghost” more personal, adding poems that really talked about how I felt about the inner me. It was like putting a confession on paper for the whole world to read. Needless to say, the sales were still small but the reviews were heartfelt. I understood that writing is about saying the things that everyone feels but can’t find the words for. The poems in “Ghost” are simple in structure, with an emphasis on how I clearly feel about failure, suicide, mistakes, walking away from love and my doubts about life and God.

Having two books under my belt, I decided to expand my efforts. My third book was “Smoke Breaks” It is a volume of thirty three short stories under a thousand words each. The genre is called flash fiction, but there was nothing fictional about the stories. The making of the book was a breeze. I bought the rights to a fantastic photo for the cover. All the past problems I had encountered had vanished, and the book came out perfect in its first printing.

“Smoke Breaks” Is an expansion of very personal stories that expose my insane life. Some of the poems from “Passing Through the Ghost” were expanded on. Overall, the reviews have been excellent though sales are still slow.

One of the things I wanted from my books was them to pay for themselves. In the beginning, I printed them without ISBN numbers and only had the free membership here at AuthorsDen. The majority of my exposure was from my blog. As of today, all three books have earned enough money to purchase ISBN’s and an upgrade to a gold membership. Perhaps I am a bad parent, making my children work for their future, but the life of drifting and passing through the world, searching for something to say, left me no other choice.

My next project will be the novel I have had nothing but trouble with. “How to Kill Harry” has been written, published, yanked, re - written, edited four times and anything you can think of as far as changes go, has occurred with this novel. Perhaps “Harry” suffers the sins of the father.

Another valuable lesson I have learned on the way; never mix business with pleasure. I am almost done with the final edit and look forward to “How to Kill Harry” making its debut next month.