Ed. Note: Cursed Legacy is Harriet Everend’s debut novel, released on June 23, 2021. Her second novel will be released in early 2022. In this article, Everend describes how her first novel was born, and offers thoughtful advice and encouragement to independent writers interested in self-publishing.
It’s cold outside and you’ve just arrived at your best friend’s house for the weekly game night. He’s excited, as he’s been wanting to get you and your husband to play this board game that has been sitting on the shelf for months. But it takes time and patience to play. You’re not much of a gamer, but you figure why the hell not? It’s cold and snowing outside and you’re already sick of the same three games you play every time you get together.
When you enter the house, you head to the basement where everything is set up, a mixed drink ready in your usual spot at the gaming table. Your friend pulls out the game — it’s called Betrayal Legacy, created by Avalon Hill. In the game, up to five players (we had four) explore a haunted mansion over several decades. Players represent families — with specific members of said family taking part in one or more chapters. Depending on whether a specific family member lives or not, players can continue to play as an older version of themselves or as descendants. The game itself is comprised of a prologue and a 13-chapter story.
As we played, I started seeing the potential to take elements from this game and turn it into a short story. However, my best friend (at the time) convinced me to turn it into a full-blown novel — something people had not read before. I started filling up a notebook with notes from our gameplay sessions, highlighting things that happened while we played — such as finding relics, discovering new rooms, and noting whenever a player died (which happened frequently). It took the four of us three months to complete the game (mind you, we only played 1 to 2 chapters a night, and only on Saturday nights. We could have finished the game sooner, but we weren’t in any rush to get through it).
Originally, I planned for the novel to have a prologue and 13 chapters, just like in the game; however, as I wrote the first draft, the story shaped itself and it ended up being a prologue and 15 chapters. To be honest, I’m not much of a planner with my writing; but it was all but required when writing this book. I typed up a loose outline and organized all the family members from the four families in our gameplay (The Porters, the Bornes, the Rosenthals and the Sterlings) and arranged them in the correct decade/game chapter. Once I completed that, I let my mind loose and began writing a first draft. I set aside a few hours every night after my 9-to-5 job to work on getting the story fleshed out.
Self-publishing
I decided to go the self-publishing route, which is surrounded by a bit of controversy in the writing community. There are people who feel you’re only a successful author (or an author in general) if you’re published by one of the big five publishing houses. However, this is not for everyone; and while on my writing journey, I decided that getting traditionally published wasn’t the route for me. It could take up to a year to even be considered; and even if your piece is good, it still might not be taken because publishing houses get thousands of submissions a year and they generally take what they’re already looking for.
What does it mean, to self-publish? Aside from not going to a traditional publishing house, you have a few options, the big ones being Amazon KDP or IngramSpark. I personally published my book on Amazon KDP. You have to pay for your own ISBN (or you can use one that Amazon or Ingram offers you, but I don’t recommend it). It’s expensive to acquire an ISBN, but worth it. When you self-publish, you have to pay for everything yourself — editor, cover designer, someone to do your formatting, and any other costs that can come up while writing a book. Anyone who says self-publishing a book is easy or cheap is half correct, but they don’t know the full story. If you want a quality product, you are going to have to be willing to spend a lot to make it worth peoples’ time.
Once I’d decided to self-publish, I hired a book cover designer I found through Fiverr, an online marketplace for digital services. Once I sent over my specific requirements, it took her about a week to get down exactly what I was looking for. Even to this day, my cover is something I get a lot of compliments on.
Besides this, I decided I wanted to have something different done with my novel to make it stand out from other self-published/independent authors: I had scene illustrations done by hired artists from Fiverr, from local artists who were looking to build their portfolio, and a couple from a dear friend of mine who wanted to help. Throughout the writing process, I did several rounds of self-edits, in addition to using programs like ProWritingAid to help clean up my work. Ultimately, I felt it was in my best interest to spend the money on an editor to have a fresh set of eyes look at mistakes I could have overlooked.
I completed about 80% of the first draft within six months, but because of COVID, being laid off/searching for a new job and severe depression (one of these including losing the very friend who inspired me to write this novel), I hit pause on writing. I would eventually come back and finish the book in early May 2021 and have it published the following month.
To be honest, the hardest part of the process was something I should NOT have had a hard time with — marketing. I have a bachelor’s degree in marketing, but this was my first “real world” experience with the subject.
When you’re a self-published or independent author, odds are you will not have a lot of money to hire someone professional to do the marketing for you. I will tell you right now: If you’re thinking of writing a book and going the self-publishing route, develop a plan and use any cheap or free resource you have at your disposal. Fortunately, I had developed my social media presence well before I planned on launching my novel; I generated daily, relevant content and developed connections with others working in my genre, and others who were in positions similar to mine.
By the time I was ready to launch in June, I had established a significant following on my Instagram and TikTok accounts and made close to 70 sales on release day (which doesn’t sound like a significant amount, but to a first-time author who was winging it, this was beyond my wildest expectations).
I’m still very active on social media and I’m getting ready to launch my second novel. Like Cursed Legacy, it is a horror novel — but it isn’t a sequel. This is a collaboration novel I wrote with two other authors (and two contributors), called The Summoning. and will release in early 2022.
I know a lot of you are thinking that being a writer isn’t feasible, or that you will never have your work published, or that it isn’t good enough. Listen to me: I thought this as well for many years (hell, I even “quit” writing for 10 years because of depression and writer’s block/doubts). I’m still working a regular 9-to-5 job and until I can make my writing a profitable career, I will continue to work my 9-to-5 job.
But I am here to say to you that if you have a book idea or you love to write and want to have your voice heard, do NOT let anyone stop you or discourage you. There is always someone out there who is waiting for your story to be told and to be printed. Who knows — your work could be someone’s next favorite piece of literature and they just don’t know it yet. So, I leave to any potential authors these pieces of advice:
- If you like to plan, plan out an outline for your story. If you aren’t a planner, that’s perfectly fine. Either way, write to your heart’s content and get everything out onto paper. Editing, re-organizing and structuring will come in its own time.
- If you want to make your presence known, set up social media accounts strictly for your writing, create a newsletter, and maybe consider setting up a website (Wix.com will let you set up a basic one for free). Getting an early hype built up and getting people aware of your book early will help you in the long run.
- Connect with other writers out there. They can be your biggest support system. Personally, aside from my husband and a handful of people, my writer friends/writing family have been such a tremendous support on this journey. Honestly, if it weren’t for a couple of specific writer friends, Cursed Legacy would still be sitting on my Word Doc, unfinished.
