How it all Began

#indieauthors #writerslife #amwritingromance #RomanceReaders #paranormalromance

So Draoithe is the project.  If you are new to Ophelia Kee speaks, allow me to introduce the blog properly. I write about writing this series, publishing this series, promoting my books, and marketing. No lies, just the truth about what I am doing. This is a chronicle of my Indie author journey. I am here proving that I can indeed mess it all up. Lol. As many who have been following me for awhile knows, I worked as a high school history teacher for over twelve years. Writing fantasy became a serious hobby during a repetitive training meeting when I had a laptop but no access to my first love, reading. I started writing. It was a story. It was awful. I hated it. I deleted everything but chapter one. I started over. I wrote another story. It was good. It was really good. My friends even liked it, like not just smile, nod, but never read it. I mean for real. A Pack Forms lived as a rough draft manuscript.

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Only, what to do with it? I had no idea. There were classes to teach, a career to manage, a household to run, some dogs, two kids, etc... infinity. But the story wasn't done. There were questions that had to be answered. So I kept writing. But it got way too long. So I broke the story in half, and The Council existed. Now I am pretty sure at this point that I am crazy, and this is not how other writers write, publish, market, any of it. But I had no idea how to do any of that. Hell, I didn't even know what some of that was. The story took on a life of its own. I wanted to write it. The scenes flowed out onto the page. It got wrapped into my day. work, read, write a bit. Until I had like seven books, and it seemed like I should try publishing them.

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I looked into publishing. I called a few people. Pay to publish is like outrageously expensive. You actually need a cover. (Laugh, but I had not thought of that.) Traditional publishing houses wanted things I did not understand how to give them. The series was far from done. I still had no idea what the ending looked like. Outlines? Who has time for that? What would I put in an outline? A few points from the first book and a lot of question marks?
Then one company noted that they wanted a plot arc description. Look man, I read books. I wrote a few stories. I still don't really have any idea how to write a plot arc description even if I did google the definition for what is a plot arc. Also, I had no idea how to write the plot arc for a series that I did not know the end to. (Full disclosure, I learned about branding just before book seven was actually ready to publish. It was at that point that I changed all the covers.)

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Now there are actually twelve full length novels published including a Prequel and an Forbye. Are they perfect? Nope. I keep working on it though. (If you find flaws, let me know so I can correct. Grammarly is helping that.) I am learning a lot. I am getting better at Indie publishing. I realize that I do have to compete with traditional publishers and other Indie authors who have been doing this for awhile. I may never get it all figured out, but what I do know is Draoithe is a good story. The world building is serious. The characters have depth. Even the short reads are great short stories set in the dream. I will never attain perfection. That was never the goal. I want to tell a great story. So I will keep at it.

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Most of you are aware by this point that most of the novels in the Draoithe series are finished as rough draft manuscripts. (Many are rougher than walking through a sandstorm, but the series is nearly complete on the creative side. The rest is technical stuff.) I should publish twelve full length novels before 2021. I promise to give sneak peeks of some of them as they get closer to publication. That means that the Draoithe series should finish maybe next year.  I anticipate that the series will finish out with several more short reads and end at 30 or less novels. It was an ambitious project. I know. But I swear that I did not consider any of that while writing it. I just wrote a story.

Okay, time for shameless book promotion. This week, Draoithe is giving away Still Waters Part 1. The offer ends at midnight Feb. 9. Grab your free copy before the time runs out! Available from Amazon and always FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

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I'm gonna run away and write. Thumbs up on grammarly everybody. If you type with google docs, it's great. Gotta say I was not sold on the Kindle formatting tool. I don't see how it is really better than google docs rendering as an epub, and it is a lot of extra steps. My personal opinion is to skip it. If you write and publish, check it out for yourself, but I will not be using it. If you read, don't forget to be kind and leave a review. 
Be Careful!
Happy reading,
​Ophelia Kee