Guest Author Beth Prentice

Please join me in welcoming debut author Beth Prentice!  She's a super sweet lady with a really fun book, so take it away, Beth...

Everyone has a story don’t they.  Whether its happy or sad, exciting or boring, life altering or just life sharing, we all have our story to tell.  Ok, I’ll admit mine was slightly on the boring side, but I was contented nonetheless.  Until I blinked.  When I opened my eyes, I sat stunned in the knowledge that my two beautiful children had grown up.  Just like that.  I mean, I’m sure it was only yesterday that they were babies.  How could they grow so fast?  And to top off my day I realized that I had been made redundant.  Yes, redundant!!  By the two people I treasure most in the world.  It appears that now they are teenagers they no longer need Mum running their lives.  Hunph.  Now what was I supposed to do?  Of course my husband had a few ideas that involved me going out and actually earning some money.  Ok, I admit the pay packet would be nice, but that was the only positive I could find in that scenario.  Don’t get me wrong, I have had many jobs over the years, all of which probably gave me more qualifications to do the job I’m doing now than any higher education ever could, but none of them made me want to jump out of bed in the morning.  So I decided to write!!!

Isn’t that what everyone does?

I thought if nothing else it would be great therapy for me to help me through the day.  But what should I write about?  My life is the only thing that I’m an expert on.  Actually, I probably should rephrase that.  If I’m being completely honest I don’t know what’s going on in my own life half the time!!  I did however, find out that my life is anything but boring.  I just realized that I needed to approach it with a bit of humility and humour.  I mean, if I can’t laugh at myself then who can I laugh at?

So, write is what I did.  Now all of those years making up stories to the kids and helping them with their assignments started to come in handy.  I had an idea for a novel.  I thought it was a good one and surely this novel writing stuff couldn’t be that hard.

Ummm, I hear you say?  Well, I soon found out that you were right.  It’s not as easy as it looks.  But I did find out that I love it.  So several (and yes, that is code for A LOT!) months later, my novel all complete, I wondered now what to do with it.  Yes that secret dreamer inside of me dreamed of seeing it in print with a lovely shiny cover and smelling that wonderful smell that only a new book smells of.  But once I had started to Google how to actually make this process happen, my hopes and dreams soon crashed.  Now I will admit that I may not be looking in the right places, but the information that I could find was totally depressing.  There was no way on Earth that little old me could break into this market.

Then one day I accidently stumbled upon the road to self-publishing with Kindle.  It was like a beacon shining out to me.  Finally this was something I could try.  I had no idea how my book would be perceived by the general public (of course, I think it’s amazing J) but if I changed my name slightly and did this in secret, I would never have to actually see anybody that had read it right?  This way if they hated it, I would not have to see the look of pity in their eyes and then have them avoid me for the next 6 months.  So that’s what I did.  I mean, what did I have too lose?  And to my utmost surprise, people bought it!  Not only that, my reviews have been very encouraging (And yes, they are from real people that I don’t even know J). 

Hmm, I thought.  This is great!  But now what?

Well an amazing thing happened.  I sucked up all my courage and wrote an email to the wonderful Gemma Halliday, asking her how I could get my book mentioned in her free book Friday reviews.  And she ANSWERED!!!  Can you believe that?  Honestly, I had to look twice when I read the sender.  This can’t be real?  The Author of some of my absolute favourite books had written back to me.  And not only did she offer me a spot in her free book Friday she offered me this opportunity as well.

Now I’m not saying I have a best seller on my hands, but the true miracle of this is that little old me, got to be seen by wonderful people like yourself.  I still have to pluck up the courage and send it to a publisher but with all the encouragement that I have received so far, I may do just that.

So my message to all of you out there who feel like giving up hope, or worse still, never actually try because you are afraid to face your fear – trust yourself.  It’s still early days for me but I’ve found people are really helpful and encouraging and with a bit of faith, you can achieve anything!

So this is it folks, my first novel.  I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

 

~ Beth Prentice

 

Buy It Started with a House on Amazon!