Book in Review

I have only been selling my wares through the kindness of my friends and family on facebook. I have this website set up. I have a moderate amount of traffic coming through but I don’t know that every click on Amazon or BnN is an actual book sale. It could just be a someone browsing.

Until now, the only people to have read my story were people that knew me personally. These people helped me hone my book and cut chapters to make it shorter. I KNOW, it’s LONG but imagine if I HAD NOT cut the chapters about food at the cabin. You can read about that in the Cabin Mom blog entry.

About five people read the book in it’s entirety. Several people read all the blog posts that the novel is based on. All these people know me, except a few who frequented my blog. I have no idea who those people are but they were regular readers.

I have been stressing about the content of my book and how it will be received by strangers and people who know me and my family. I have had one family member review and it was deep discussions. Agree to disagree on some of the writings but overall we agreed upon the story.

A friend messaged me that she had one of the teachers I write about in the book and I got his name wrong. LOL. I totally did. Two of the teachers I write about have names with R. They got swapped out for different names. She called me out. I’m human. I forgot. It’s a minor detail. But it was funny.

But through FB a stranger noted that he had finished my book and thought it was good. Throughout this whole process, I still doubted my story. I asked him to please leave me a nice review on Amazon if he like it. He said he would and did. He gave me 4 out of 5 stars. He dinged me for my typos in the book “because I’m just that kinda guy” he said. I get it.

We all want to know if what we do matters. We all want to know if what we say matters. I wrote this book as an expression of myself but also in hopes that is sheds light on mental illness, suicide, trauma, and sexual abuse. Even while I wrote this, I doubted my story was worth telling. I doubted myself. I didn’t think it was any good. Even though the people who read it assured me the story was a good one and needed to be told.

I’m sure there will be people who won’t like it. The language will be too filthy, it will be too dark or graphic.

Today I see this book in a new light. Somebody read this book and said it was good. I made a connection to someone outside of my circle. Maybe I am an author after all. Maybe what I had to say does matter.