Just turned down a publishing offer for Dead Living

It’s amazing how things change.

I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. I never had any real dreams of becoming a published author. I just liked to write. In the back of my head, I never really wrote anything that I thought was good enough to show anyone else, so I didn’t. 🙂 I just wrote, stored everything on the hard drive, and wrote some more. I always wanted to be published, but confidence issues kept me from taking it any further.

After proofreading Demonspawn to the point where my eyes started bleeding, I started thinking maybe it was good enough to send out to agents/publishers. There wasn’t any luck there, so late last year, with the wifey behind me pushing, I went the DTP route (called KDP now).

Feeling pretty good about the knowledge that I didn’t get any emails from readers saying “This is complete trash. I got physically ill reading it.”, I decided to take my next novel the KDP route as well. Dead Living was born with the simple idea of “What can I do that hasn’t been done in a zombie story?” I’m very proud of it, and judging from responses from readers, it seems like other people like it, too. As a writer, that’s really all you can ask.

I recently received an offer to put Dead Living in print from a small press. This is literally a dream come true. Someone discovered Dead Living, and wanted to publish it. It’s something I never dreamed possible. A year ago, I would have jumped all over it.

But I hesitated. There’s all kinds of factors that went into the decision. Believe it or not, I think I’m actually starting to develop a small fan base. A comment here, an email there. It’s a great feeling, and I feel I don’t want to risk that by taking Dead Living off the shelf for an extended length of time. If I had more books out (Mind Slide is just around the corner, and I’m working on a Demonspawn spin-off), I probably would have jumped on the offer.

I tossed and turned on it for a while, and just decided that the current route I’m on is the best for now. The real winner right now is zombie fans. 🙂  The eBook version of Dead Living is cheap, only $2.99, and I’ve received comments from readers about how they were surprised it was priced so low. I’m toying with the idea of a Createspace print version as well, so stay tuned. 🙂