Above the Lake. (Official).

Not quite yet- death of a blogger! After such an unseemly interlude between posts (time flies with post-Mayan haste) but it has become evident that mine isn't going to be a rags to riches overnight success story (perseverance furthers advises the I Ching, although equally it suggests there is no point in entering the field if there is nothing to hunt!). Much has happened in the interim keeping me otherwise occupied: like 3 complete ms rewrites (polishing the household silver), breaking up with my partner and the getting back together, rejection slips from literary agents and publishers (15 at last count-2 still pending) and of course not forgetting core values: that of being a painter and painting. That's where the memoir and my calling in life dovetail neatly together, and one motivation for writing my story in the first place-a blatant bit of self-promotion.

After several title incarnations: Flight of Faith (smacks of religion)- Still life with Sunflowers (well not too bad)- Under A Tuscan spell, the artist's tale (derivative and lame), I have finally come up with a title that I can live with: Above the Lake: Tuscany, the artist's journey, which manages to touch a few bases-element of mystery, Tuscany, travel, artist and satisfies my editor Geoffrey's insistence that I can't have a title that doesn't directly reference something in the book (Cortona, Camelot-like rises above the lake...). 

Meanwhile, waiting (not idly) for THE call, I have decided  to go the self-publishing route: firstly because I can and it's no longer frowned upon or necessarily an admission of failure, secondly because I am curious to see what happens and thirdly to start building a social media platform for the book, as strongly recommended by most literary agents- who want to know that you are media savvy and like publishers, gas stations and supermarket self-check outs are getting you to do their work for them!

I actually have in hand a hard copy of the book! Amazing. I guess with the millions of self-published books it's not a bad money spinner either for Amazon or Lulu or whoever you go with-vanity publishing at its most enticing, no need for expensive print runs, it costs you nothing to produce, just publish on demand.

I will write about the process in another post because it is extraordinary having such a powerful array of creative tools at your fingertips.

Vanity publishing used to have a bad name but with the advances in technology and an explosion of wannabe authors that is no longer the case; the Indies taking on the Goliaths of the publishing industry with some notable success, particularly with the advent of E-books and the increasing popularity of E-readers like Kindle and Nook tablets, even undermining the viability of bricks and mortar bookshops these days.

I did have doubts about self-publishing (a hang up about self-esteem) and wasn't even considering it until by chance, looking for modern interpretations of the I Ching on the web I was drawn to a version by Michael Graeme (Free PDF download here) and then discovered in true I Ching synchronistic tradition that Michael also writes a blog and is a self-published author by preference, whose musings on self-publishing changed my perspective. Check out this article on his blog: Is Lulu.com a scam?

Well, the title is out there, since December and as of today 16 people have read the first three chapters on Wattpad, 36 people have downloaded samples from Smashwords and 16 people have bought electronic versions. I have bought 4 hardcopies from Amazon and the  Above the Lake facebook page has 31 likes!

It's not exactly viral but early days, early days...