For the first time ever my preface doesn't suck

For the first time ever my preface doesn't suck.

 

 

I have been trying to sell my book Retaliation to publishers/agents for over a year, I have had some co-op offers and I have the ability to self-publish, but I have stopped myself from pulling the trigger and getting the book on shelves, Amazon and e-book because I was a little afraid that it wasn't good enough. When you put a book out into the world yourself, you have to accept that the money you spend is an investment, however what is an investment other than a punt, a bet, a gamble? You have to be prepared that everything you spend may be lost, no one may buy your book, it may get bad reviews, rather than make money from the investment you may end up with a lot of fuel for the fire. So I think that is what has stopped me from pushing forward, as Retaliation is the biggest story I have ever told and the ground work for a larger universe that I plan to write, I have been afraid to release it, just in case it isn't good.

This belief comes from that pesky preface, I had tried to write this book for over ten years, but after I wrote the preface I struggled to go back to it, so then every time I would I would spend an hour re-working the preface until eventually I followed it up with a few chapters. Then I would go back and redo the chapters over and over again. My epiphany came a few years ago when I decided to ignore the writing I had already done and just continue the story and after a lot of time I finally finished my first full draft of the story. So the first thing I did was go straight into editing and re-writing and the first thing that needed changed was that damn preface. So after many rounds of editing and re-writes I finally decided I wanted to move forward with the book and that led me to the process of submitting to Publishers and agents.

The problem with publishers and agents is that they are only interested in the first three chapters, so I had sent the preface and those chapters every time. The problem with this is that that is the section of the book I was most unhappy with, why? Because it was the earliest part I wrote and it has be re-worked so many times I lost confidence in that section. So I have probably been laying my lack of full offers on the sub-standard quality of that work.

For the first time in a lot of months I have re-read this section of the book, with a view to preparing it for some form of release ahead and I have to say I really enjoyed the preface, it told the story how I wanted it too and created the scene for the rest of the book, it's amazing that time can be a great healer, the writing did not improve or age since I wrote it, but my perception of it has changed. Coming fresh to the story after a while has shown me that the book is probably ready for some form of release and if I can't do it with a full publishing deal then it will happen another way. Hold on to your hats, Retaliation will be taking off into outer space.

Written by Martin Wallace