A.K. Michaels Guest Post~Giveaway

A.K. MICHAELS

I’ve to do a post for the fabulous Carrie aka Indy Book Fairy and well the truth is I’m kinda useless at posts. I neglect my own blog page on my website terribly and always forget to upload things! So, here goes, I thought you might be interested in how I came to write, hope I don’t bore you all to death!

For those of you that don’t know me, I suffer from pretty bad OCD and anxiety problems and they have impacted on my life pretty badly. I see a therapist most weeks and she is an amazing person who has helped me immensely. I honestly can’t thank her enough for all that she’s done for me, she has quite literally given me my life back. It was in one of our sessions, after I had once again told her ‘bout all these stories running around in my head that she said, ‘Why don’t you try writing them out?’

I was like, heck no, I can’t do that! However, each session afterwards she chipped away at my ‘can’t’ and made it into ‘I’ll try’. I bought an old second hand laptop, sat down and started typing. Jeez, it was like a dam had been burst and I just couldn’t stop writing (or typing lol). Every time one story neared it’s end another would pop into my head, then another, then another. In fact, soon, I was working on two different stories at the same time, my head was that full of words. I had actually finished three full books before my family had even figured out what I was doing!

That brought my next problem...letting someone else see my words. Could I? Nope! I was terrified but again my angel, aka therapist, chipped away at my objections and I let one of our daughters and my sister read book 1. They both loved it and urged me to actually do something with what I had written. Now that gave me a whole set of new fears...how could I let strangers see my stories? No, that so wasn’t happening lol! Talk ‘bout panic – I was terrified! However, I started to look into things and soon realised that I could do it all myself...on Amazon. That’s if I found the courage to do it!

I looked into getting a cover, found out how to do the formatting – and trust me that was so not fun! Took me an entire two days to figure out how to format for Create Space for a paperback lol! I’m sure I almost threw the laptop out the window at more than one point! I finally worked it out and loaded everything up, but, I didn’t press ‘publish’. I was still far too scared. With more prodding and encouragement I finally thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ Although in the back of my mind I kept telling myself that ‘No, you can’t’.

I finally pressed that publish button on 23^rd November 2013, set up facebook etc and heck things have gone from strength to strength since then! I’ve found editors – yup plural – two – one in UK and one in US, who I cherish dearly. I’ve now got a Street Team and made so many friends online. In fact, I can still remember the very first time someone contacted me online after reading my first book, her name is Colette, and I thought she had made a mistake and it wasn’t me she was looking for lol. She is now on my team and a very dear friend and she is proud to call herself my very first ‘stalker’ lol!

I now have sixteen books live and am working on many more! My head is full of stories, words, characters and I just have to keep typing to get them out! I still have days where sheer terror overcomes me and at those times I am sure this is all a dream and I’ve really not written those books or had folks like them! Yes, I’ve had some that don’t like my books, and that’s okay. I thought I would collapse in a heap when I got a bad review but it’s actually made me better, made me strive to make my stories better, make my writing the best that I possibly can.

I’m not sure where this journey is taking me, and the ride is scary as hell, but I’m gonna hold on with both hands and try and enjoy it for as long as I can! I hope you come and join me xx

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