Editor’s Note: I first met Karena Graca when I reached out to feature her business, Twist of Fate Estate Sales in the The Ripple Effect. Our paths continued to cross and I sensed there was at least one more story just begging to be told. Don’t be a stranger Karena!

Hello book lovers! Lori has asked me to relay the “Glamourous” process I went through while writing and publishing my fiction novel, Devon’s Sound.

Well, it was easy – I just closed my eyes and let my possessed fingers type it all out in lightning speed. Before I knew it, the book had written itself. Believe me? Cool – now I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

I have always dabbled in writing. I took some courses at Ryerson back in my twenties; I wrote for company newsletters during my travel career *yawn*, then finally, I took the “How to write a book” course provided by Fredericton’s late, great novelist, Mr. Biff Mitchell, may he rest in peace.

I was on medical leave for complications from a brain tumour and bored out of my gourd when I finally decided to put that nasty little growth in my cranium to work. It had been causing the wildest, most psychedelic dreams and I said to myself, “self, one of these shards from the exploding kaleidoscope of insanity that visits you at 3am is PROBABLY worthy of taking further”. So, I tried it.

I am not normal. At all. So, I knew I did not want to succumb to the banality of staring at a screen, fighting writers block and second guessing myself. I needed to break the proverbial mold and try something different. As if writing a book isn’t challenging enough, I thought “how can I make this more difficult for myself”. I invited 10 people to help me create my characters.

I gave each of my players a one-page form and asked them to 1) name the character based on them, 2) tell me how they dressed, 3) give me a basic back story, 4) make up an enormous secret. I was going to incorporate every one of these 40 details into my novel.

I made a story board just like Biff taught me – except it took up half of my bedroom. I mean, I had a lot of secrets to expose! I made up two characters myself, and told the story from the first-person perspective of 12 different cast members. I say “cast” because I am patiently waiting for Netflix to discover Devon’s Sound and make it into a miniseries! Stop judging me – It could happen!

I hired an editor in British Columbia and she fixed all my booboos. Turns out I am far from perfect at grammaticism. (is that even a word?)

Now – time to get published! “Hey, I wrote this fantastic story – wanna publish, print and sell it for me?” I tried over 40 publishing houses from right here in NB all the way to Australia. I heard bupkis from all of them. Not even a “sorry, this sucks.” Just crickets. Wind whistling over the hills. An empty vacuum of space. What next?

Well, I got this far, I might as well drag my white elephant through the quicksand and bring ‘er home. Amazon, here I come. Yep, I self published. This means I had to design my own cover, format my own margins, write my own synopsis, create a biography that made me sound somewhat interesting, order my test copy and wait 4 weeks for it to arrive.

My margins were too big. The font was too small. It was way too many pages and the printing cost was stupidly high. Start over, rinse repeat. Four weeks later, my perfect copy arrived! Under 200 pages, so cheap enough to print that I could sell it for $12.99 a copy. I wasn’t out to get rich – I just wanted to share my story.

I’ve sold a couple hundred copies between Amazon, Westminster Books (It’s no longer available there now that it is under new management), and a few private stores. If I sell 500 more, I might possibly break even from my editing costs! Woe is me.

Well, while I wait for you all to read it (and tell two friends, and they will tell two friends and so on and so on) I will spend my days working for a living at my own little company, Twist of Fate Estate Sales *insert gratuitous small business plug here, wink wink*.

What did I do wrong? With so many people involved, I should have provided a release form so I could credit them in the actual novel, but since that detail wasn’t apparent to me until it was too late, I had to leave them anonymous. NOW – when Netflix comes a’calling, I will make sure all 10 of them get a piece of the pie and the recognition they deserve.

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Devon’s Sound can be found at Devon’s Sound: Graca, Karena: 9798370564642: Books – Amazon.ca

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