Tag: reflection

The Firstborn

On By dphauthorIn Through Sweet Like Sugar, You See Me2 Comments

Being the youngest child in the family, I don’t know what it feels like to be a firstborn. Having no live children, I also don’t know what it feels like to have a firstborn.

But I do have 2 baby books, and might be able to share my experience of giving birth to the firstborn and watch her grow.

First, I must admit that I sometimes forget my firstborn. Or maybe forget is the wrong word. ‘Give up’ sounds more like it, and it does sound more cruel, doesn’t it?

Here’s the thing. I went into labor without any help, as far as marketing went. All I had was my own guts and a naive imagination of what life would be after giving birth to my first book. None of which helped, of course, and the latter didn’t even come close to the reality.

I did not have any beta readers for my first book. All I had was my mother/editor/alpha reader. I’m not saying this is a mistake; some people might be good enough not to need any other help but from an editor/one alpha reader. My problem was (one of many others) that I wrote about something I didn’t know.

The setting for my first book is Louisiana, USA, and I’ve never been to USA, let alone Louisiana. So I should have probably hired a local editor from that state. I didn’t, simply because I didn’t have the money. I was sane enough not to think that I would strike it rich with my first book, so I didn’t want to spend any savings for something I haven’t tested. And yet, in doing so, I probably just made things worse.

Having no beta readers mean that there was no one to tell me if there was something wrong with the story. I trust my mom/editor, but she is just one person. Sometimes we miss things. The advantage of having several beta readers is that one of these people might catch some oddities you/your editor don’t. Again, nobody told me about this before, so I went into the water without any beta readers.

Which also meant that there was no one to give me those ‘crucial’ reviews/testimonials/endorsements when my book just came out.

Imagine this: you see a nice looking book, read the preview at the back & got a bit interested, and try to find out if anyone has read it/if they liked it… and you found none. You read the author’s name again, and realized you’ve never heard of that person before. As you try to look for more info about the author, you found nothing either! What would make you invest your time and money to read a book no one has ever heard of, by an author no one has ever heard of?

Nothing.

And I learned all that only after my firstborn book was out. I thought I was prepared for everything and ready to sell. I waited in anticipation and religiously checked my sales report, while trying my best to market it on my social media platform (which also had no followers as yet). I’m sure you know where this is going. Yep. Downhill.

I won’t lie. I felt that slap in the face, hard. And I noticed I wasn’t the only one. Some people made the same decisions (again, not mistakes) and one by one, I saw them disappearing from the same social media platform, pulling back their books from the circulation at the same time. The authors and their books ceased to exist, just like that.

I thought of doing the same, many times. But I thought I’d stick around just a little more, and resorted to plan B, which in my opinion is also a sad fate for self-published authors: have a free promotion for the book.

Trust me, when you’ve written a book, pour out your heart & soul to it, the last thing you’d want to do is let people read it for free. And they shouldn’t, in the perfect world. You should know your worth, and your book is your artwork, and that is priceless.

But we don’t live in the perfect world, do we? And sometimes, you need to–ugh–beg. By begging, I mean do that f-in free promotion, in the hope that someone, somewhere, will read it and give your book a review (I didn’t even care what review, good or bad was all welcomed!). At least this way you’d know that the review is based solely on your book, not a sugar-coated version you’d get when you pay for a review.

To my surprise (I mean really, it did take me by surprise), the reviews did start to come… and none of them were as bad as I thought.

So I did this begging technique a few more times, especially since a year after my firstborn was out, the lockdown had just started everywhere. I thought that was the perfect timing for people to start reading, and if I could help in any way to ease up their days (with a free psychological thriller book, no less), then why not?

This was when I started to get even more surprised.

By this point, I started to notice how some reader, instead of using the free promotion, decided to purchase my book instead. Was it because I already had a few reviews for it? Was it because of the friends I made in the social media? Was it just because of the book cover (which I also really love)? Whatever it was, it was working.

Finally, my firstborn started to stand on her own feet.

When my second book was born, I decided not to have a free promotion. At least for now, I want to keep my self-worth and put a price to my books. I put everything I learned from not having a successful firstborn to launching my second book baby, and was ready to reap the profits.

At first, that was what it looked like. I got better & quicker sales than I did for my firstborn, reviews poured in quicker too, and all of this was without doing any free promotion. Feeling like I knew how to do it properly this time made me concentrate completely on my second book baby. I neglected my firstborn and, like I said, gave up on promoting it in any way.

But my firstborn is smart. I’m still not quite sure how she does it, but just when I gave up on her, she started running around the world barefeet.

Whenever I put both of my books for a countdown sale, my firstborn somehow convinced people that she was worth the read, too–sometimes even more than my second book. When there isn’t any promotion going on, she manages to make people read her on Kindle Unlimited, or even buy her for the full price.

As a mother, I am pleasantly surprised. To see that some new readers notice the book I had given up on, read it, and even put some reviews for it… there’s no greater feeling than that.

I guess in a way it’s my firstborn’s way of saying, “Look, Ma, no hands!”

And I am a proud Mama. Truly.

Thank you for giving my firstborn a chance, even when her own mother had been neglecting her.

Keep Writing

On By dphauthorIn You See MeLeave a comment

Why do you write?

Ah, the million dollar question.

Once you pronounce yourself a writer, you get this question a lot. The answers vary among writers and authors, but I’m here to tell you about mine in the hope that I’d get to convince you (yes, you!) to keep writing, no matter what.

I’ve written short stories from when I was a kid, in my native language. I seem to have lots of ideas back then & if I didn’t write them down, I’d draw them as comics. But my ‘real’ writing experience didn’t start then.

It started when I had my very first bad heartbreak. It was my first year of uni and I was unprepared for the reality that this person was not waiting for me. I became obsessed for a while, couldn’t think of anything else but him and how to get him back. It was unhealthy.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t watch any movie, because everything would just remind me of him. (I did read Harry Potter though, the 3rd book just came out. It was rainy and gloomy, perfect for my mood that time.) Music was the same. It was hard.

It went on for a few months, until I finally picked up a notebook and started writing… to myself. I started with something along these lines: ‘One day, my future self will look at this moment and laugh, maybe because we’d be together again, or maybe because I’d realize how ridiculously hopeless I was.’

I was still hopeful when I started writing into that notebook, treating it as unsent letters to him. After a while, the hopefulness changed into frustration, and afterwards, anger. It was ugly, full of downs and more downs. My handwriting was sometimes neat, sometimes jagged and the paper dented with the pressure I made while writing the angry words. Some pages were crumpled and dog-eared because of my tears they caught.

More months went by, and for whatever reason (maybe I was running out of pages), I started reading the notebook from the beginning again… and that was when I realized how silly I was for clinging on to him and our non-existent future together. 

After many times of doing this on repeat (writing, re-reading, writing, re-reading–my real life was pretty much on pause during those times), it was time for me to move on to the next stage.

I let it go. I let him go.

No one else has ever read those notes. I don’t even have them with me anymore, but that was a turning point for me. Why? Because I wrote it from the deepest corner of my heart. And what did I get out of it? Relief, mostly. I felt like I was healed.

That was when I knew that writing, for me, will never be for pleasing or impressing others. I do it to express myself, even when no one is around to read it.

Why should it be any different now when I write books? Why should I care if anyone read my books? It shouldn’t. It’s just a lovely bonus if someone did, that’s all.

The most important thing is that I’ve expressed what I wanted to express, let out what I wanted to shout from my heart. I know this sounds like a cliché, but ever since that ‘turning point’, when I write my stories, I pour my heart out to it. Like Voldemort and his Horcruxes, I put a slice of myself into my books, always.

To me, writing is personal. It’s a journey, much like life is, for each and every one of us. Some people let their journeys be shown to people, and in this case, they become the writers we know. Some journeys touch us, some are inspirational, and some don’t come anywhere near us. But that’s life. And even if these ‘invisible’ journeys don’t touch us, their journeys don’t end there.

Now, with 2 books out and a new Work In Progress (WIP) brewing, I can’t tell you how many times I thought of quitting. I don’t get enough sales, I want to quit putting my books out there. I read someone else’s book that is so good it makes me feel like an impostor, I want to lock myself in a room and mope. I get a less than 5-star rating for any of my books, I want to stop writing altogether.

But then I remember the question at the beginning of this post and ask it to myself. Why do I write? If I said I write to express myself, then what does all of the above (paragraph) matter? That’s right, it doesn’t. Those things: the sales, how my writing is perceived by others, the ratings/reviews–they are but a bonus. When I remember how ‘far’ I’ve come from only writing to myself to self-publishing 2 books and actually selling them to more than just 1 person, and even getting any ratings/reviews at all… this is much, much more than I ever dreamed of achieving from my writing journey.

I was here, and I wrote. I am still here, and I’m still writing.

And so are you. You were here, and maybe, you’ve written something. You are still here, now, and I hope you are still writing. Maybe, one day your writing will touch me, but even if they never will, at least they were written and you’ve expressed yourself through it. I’d like to think you’ve let yourself get healed this way.

So please, keep on writing. Do it for yourself.

The Difference Between Pink and Black

On By dphauthorIn Through Sweet Like Sugar, Through The Invisible Ones, You See MeLeave a comment

As much as I’d love to tell you that I am a pro in this whole writing thing, here is the truth: I am but a beginner. It’s now been a bit over a year since I ‘decided’ to go into this business, if we count the very first word I typed into the file that eventually became my first book.

Now, having independently published two books, I can do a comparison between them. Not the stories, of course, how can a parent ever compare their children? But the methods I used and the result of such methods.

If I’m not a pro, then why bother writing these down? The answer is: I’m doing this for my future self. By writing these things down, hopefully my future self will remember that I did learn something, even if it feels like nothing comes out of it.

If you are also a beginner, or you haven’t even started, and you happen to come across this post & learn something new, then I’d be glad to know that this writing also helps someone else. It’s a win-win situation. 😉

First things first: I started out with nothing but my own manuscript and a handful of trusted people from whom I asked for advice. I had no social media account for the book purposes, and only made one a few weeks before the launching of my first book. One might say this was my first mistake, and maybe one is right.

It would definitely help my book’s marketing if I already had an effective social media account with thousands of followers. But we’re not here to speculate & I’m merely stating the facts. The fact is, I didn’t have it then.

So what happened when I started posting about the launch of my first book in the brand-new social media account?

Nothing.

I had no followers, no likes, and no posts that could pull anyone to become a reader.

For the record, my social media account’s handle used to be the name of my first book. I had (and still have) no pictures of myself, no selfies. Could this also add to the problem? Maybe.

So my socializing attempt was a flop. My book launch was a flop, too. The (low) sales were all made by my family members & friends, which was of course very nice of them, but when it came to getting reviews–I’m sorry to say–it’s pretty much non-existent. And we all know how important reviews are for an independent/self-publishing author.

And they really are important, the reviews. But even with low sales and even lower number of reviews, I decided to keep it ‘organic’ and not ask for anyone to read my book just for the sake of getting the reviews.

Having my book listed in the Kindle Unlimited gave me the opportunity to put my e-book up for Countdown & Free promotions. So I used the Countdown promo 5 months after the launch of my first book, making my e-book cost 99 cents for 72 hours. By this time, I had about 100+ followers on my social media account.

This proved to be a flop, too, and brought in only 1 sale.

Soon after, I changed the handle of my social media account to be my author name. I still don’t post any selfie there, but changing the handle made the account feel more human, and I felt like I had more freedom to post things unrelated to my first book (but related to writing in general). And since at that point I was writing my second book, it seemed natural to change it.

About 2,5 months since the Countdown promo, I decided to try the Free promo.

Needless to say, this time it was a success compared to the Countdown one. This was the first time I realized that my first book was actually interesting enough for people–other than my friends & family–to want to read, if only they didn’t need to pay for it. Which makes perfect sense, because, hello? Who am I again in the writing world?

This lifted my mood and I did it again as soon as I had my next chance, and finally, after several times of the Free promo, the reviews from new readers–people I did not know prior to writing/selling the book–started to pour in.

So yes, this experience made me learn that I shouldn’t be stingy when it comes to letting people read my book. I should forget all about the money, because the truth is, when someone is just starting out (the indie/self-pub way), no one would’ve heard about him/her. I don’t mean I should sell myself short, no, of course not. But spreading my work and finding my readers/market is more important than making money.

The reviews for my first book kept alive my will to write, and as I was finishing my second book’s manuscript, I decided it was time for me to try another method: asking people to beta read my second book.

As mentioned before, I didn’t have anything but my manuscript for my first book. This time around, though, I had about 300+ followers on my social media account, and a few fellow indie/self-pub authors that I felt comfortable sharing my second manuscript with. Some of them have read my first book and gave it good reviews, so I felt 80% sure that they would ‘get’ my second book (and maybe even like it–that’d be a great bonus). I asked them nicely and when they said yes, I prepared a list of things I wanted them to especially pay attention to when reading the manuscript.

Out of 5 beta readers (I still kept it to a minimum number), 3 gave me outstanding feedback, 1 didn’t really like it, and 1 never came back to me with any feedback. It was enough for me to go forward, so as a cherry on top, I asked the ones who did gave me their feedback if they’d be willing to write short endorsements. Some of them agreed and their endorsements are now at the back cover of my second book.

Not long after that, I published my second book, and instantly gained 4 first reviews from my beta readers. I did not ask them to do it, but I was blessed with such kind-hearted beta readers.

During the launch of my second book, I also had a giveaway contest to allure people to enter to win my second book. I would’ve thought the ‘free book’ words would win people over, but I was wrong again, for a good reason: the people who would actually read my book preferred to buy my book rather than enter my giveaway contest! 😅 That was a nice surprise!

I did still get enough entries in the end, and 4 people were given my second book for free. Out of these, 3 gave reviews (again, because they wanted to).

Now, 3 months has passed since my second book was launched and the sales number are somewhat similar to my first book’s first 3 months’ sale… but guess what? I don’t even know most of the buyers. 😁 With my first book, I knew exactly who bought them, because they were my family members & friends. Now, I can’t even tell who has bought my second book until suddenly a new review comes up.

While sales are still slow, I have to admit that using the help of beta readers was a good decision for me, even if it’s ‘only’ to get reviews. As of date, I have gotten more reviews for my second book in half the time it took for my first book to get 6 reviews.

Let’s face it, without having thousands of followers in social media and going through the traditional publishing or paying for a professional advertisement/marketing service, sales will probably always be slow and low. To tell the truth, I didn’t even expect to sell any book for my second one, except for (again) my immediate family members.

But I proved myself wrong, and that made me so happy.

And, let me remind you again: everything I’ve done for my book so far have been for free. I have not paid anyone or any party for anything at all.

I have no plans yet for any Countdown or Free promo for my second book. The second book’s regular price is already cheaper than the first one, which is one of the reasons why I’m still thinking about it. But who knows? Remembering I shouldn’t be stingy about spreading my work, I probably will end up doing it one day.

Thank you for reading this long post. ❤ My journey in the writing world & my books’ journeys shall continue no matter what, and if you’re also an indie/self-pub author, hopefully your journey continues after reading this.

To read the reviews of my books on Goodreads or leave your review (yay!), click here.

To purchase my book(s), click here.

Winner

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I love libraries. I’ve been going to one, even before I could read. My mother, sister, and I would go to the only library available for public near our home, which only had Dutch books. We would borrow children books and my mother would read them at night before we slept. I didn’t (and still don’t) speak or read Dutch, but I loved hearing the stories and seeing the images on the book.

When I moved here to my current hometown, I didn’t have any job/school to attend to and I couldn’t speak this country’s language yet. But there was a big library near my house with all kinds of English books, and I went there almost every day to spend my time with the books. To have access to millions of books for free was like a dream come true to me.

Thirteen years later, I self-published my own book, Sweet Like Sugar. Last summer, when I went to the biggest and coolest library near my current hometown, I took a picture of the ‘Mystery & Thriller books’ shelf, secretly wishing that one day, I would see my own book bearing my author name there.

Little did I know then that my wish was coming true.

Two weeks before the deadline, I came across an ad of a writing competition organized by the city library. The theme was called ‘Tapahtuiko murha?’ (Was There Murder?), a crime/possible crime genre, and it was a short story (8000 words or less) writing competition in Finnish, Swedish, and English. There would be 10 winners, whose winning works would be published in an anthology book.

Having just self-published a book that falls under the same category, after panicking a moment (2 weeks?!?) I finally decided to enter it with a brand new story.

I found out that it wasn’t impossible to create a story and write 8000 words in 2 weeks. I thought that even if I didn’t make it to the winner list, I’d have one good story in my pocket for rainy days.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I got a letter from them, saying that I was one of those 10 winners.

The best thing about this (other than having my work published) is that I also got to hear what the judges think about my writing. Their exact words were ‘Hyvällä tyylitajulla kirjoitettu kunnianhimoinen novelli’. An ambitious short story written with a good sense of style. 🖤

Other than my own family and friends, I had never had a chance to hear a review of my writing from a total stranger, so this made me realize that maybe I am not such a bad writer after all. Maybe what I’m doing, writing stories over stories, is actually worth it. And maybe it’s okay to dream big, because you’ll never know where you might land one day. 😊

The anthology book will be published next year as part of the city library’s collection.

Click here to see the competition’s result and more info about the competition (in Finnish).

Playing God

On By dphauthorIn I See You, Sweet Like Sugar, Through Sweet Like Sugar, You See MeLeave a comment

The best thing about being a writer, in my opinion, is that you get to play god.

You decide what happens to your character, who dies, who lives, who’s happy, and who’s sad. You decide what your character says, does, wears, eats, drinks, and so on.

Things you may not be able to do in your own life, you can do in your book, through your character.

For example, in real life, I can’t have a dog. I do take care of some of our relatives’/friends’ dogs now and then, but due to my work, I can’t have my own dog. Not yet. And it’s sad, because I’d love to have one.

So I dreamed up a dog and put it into my novel.

I love it. I love the imaginary dog. Through my character(s), I play with it, feed it, and walk it around. It was hard when I had to end my story, because every book has to have an ending. But who knows? I might one day be able to have an actual dog, just like the imaginary one I made.

If you’ve always dreamed of having something nice that you can’t quite have yet, it helps to write it down sometimes. You can be creative about it, visualize it to be as realistic or far-fetched as possible. It’s a fun and harmless way of playing god. At least for me, it also somewhat relieves the itch and craving.

Then, one day, when you finally get to have that nice thing, whatever it is, imagine how fun it would be to read what you’ve written those many years ago.

Never Be Normal

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If you have gone to my (book’s) Instagram account or Facebook Page, you would have noticed something by now. That’s right, I, the author of Sweet Like Sugar, stay hidden behind my book.

Well, I’m here to assure you that I am real. 🙂

Why, then, am I being so secretive about myself? Shouldn’t I be out there, to promote myself, show people how happy I am being a writer and so on? Other authors, indie or not, do this, right?

Perhaps I am old-fashioned or you can call me naïve, but I have only wished my book to go far, not because you see how I look like, see my day-to-day activity, and feel like you could be my friend. I mean, I would be happy if you feel like you could be my friend! But for my book, I need to know that people and its readers like it because of the book itself, and nothing else. And if nobody does like it because of whatever reason, that’s okay, too. At least I know that I stayed true to myself and that’s what’s important to me.

Does that sound abnormal? I guess it does, even to myself. I’m not special, and who the h**l is D. P. Haka anyway? Nobody has heard of that name.

But I have another confession to make. Before coming upon The Thirteenth Tale or Geek Love, I had also never heard of Diane Setterfield or Katherine Dunn. And to this date, I don’t follow them in social media either. It didn’t stop me from reading their books and eventually falling in love with them … the books, I mean.

I know who I am, and that is enough for now. I am far from normal, but who says we have to be normal anyway?

I’d like to clarify, though, that I really admire all the writers out there, indie or mainstream, self-published or not, who put themselves all out in their own channels. It takes courage to do that, and maybe that way is working best for them for reaching their goals.

As for me and my unconventional way, it’s an untrodden path that I can’t say yet if it’s working or not. But if a few years from now you don’t hear from me anymore … well, then you know what that means! 😀

Stay special and stay true to yourself, people!

The End

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I’m not writing about the end of my writing journey. This is something more of a reflection.

Looking back at the stuffs I had written (and never see the light of day), since my manga days, I realize that I have always had the same problem: ending the story.

I love writing and making up stories (duh, who doesn’t?). Whenever I get an idea, I’d get excited about it and start writing … and before I know it, I’m already on page 100. In my daily job, I have the same problem. When writing a work-related email to anyone, I just end up writing a short story instead of an email.

But anyway, back to the topic. I have a confession to make: out of hundreds of stories I’ve made up all my life (including the mangas), the ones that actually have proper endings are but 4 stories. Out of those 4, 2 are short stories. Something must be wrong with me, right?

I thought so, too. Until lately, say, for the past 15 years, I keep running into books that have vague endings. You know, the kind where the story hangs mid-air, and you flip to the next page and find out that that is it, and it leaves you feeling unsatisfied because, well, where’s the ending?!? You’ve spent hours reading it, and then the end is not an end at all. I feel like the authors of that kind of books may have the same problem as I do in terms of ending a story.

Some people like it, I guess, because they are free to imagine what the ending actually is. But, pardon me for being old-fashioned, in my opinion, if you’ve made a story to which people actually invest their time (and money, no matter how small) to read or follow, you’re obliged to give a proper ending to the story. Give your audience a closure. And I don’t mean a vague one, but how you, as the author, want it to end.

A few years ago, I ran across a book called The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I do like the story of the book, but the thing that made me love the book is the fact that the main character of the book said the one thing that is, in my opinion, very important in writing a story: for it to have a beginning, the main story itself, and then, of course, a proper ending.

Ever since reading that book, I try to keep that in mind, and always give a proper ending to my stories. Those 4 stories that I told you about? Those were done after reading The Thirteenth Tale.

If you have gotten my book, you’d see that I even divided the chapters that way: the beginning, the main story, and the ending. It’s hard to end a story, believe me, I should know. Most of the time, I just want to keep it going! Or then, even worse, I don’t even know how to end it, ha! But all things must come to an end, and I find that it’s sometimes easier to do things backwards, as in first find an ending you want, and work your way to the beginning from there.

Now, to end this post, as a newbie author I promise that whenever you read my book, I will have a proper ending for you. No vague, free-to-imagine kind of endings from me, ever.

 

Remember Or Not Know? (part two)

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Have you seen the latest teaser? I asked this question to my husband earlier this year, and I think we both agreed that the latter is more frightening to us.

It was just the push that I needed to start writing this story, knowing that I was not the only one thinking how scary that would be. I thought, maybe, this was worth the shot.

During the process of writing the book, I kept the discussion going with him. It helps to get a second opinion, especially if the second opinion comes from a different gender.

I hope in the end I managed to make the story as good as I imagined it would be, and as scary as we discussed it to properly be, considering that this is still a psychological thriller, not some nail-biting horror book.

But you can be the judge of that.

 

Setting It In Motion

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When was the last time I did something crazy? Answer: too long ago.

About 12 years ago, when I told my family and friends that I was moving abroad to a country half a world away from my birthplace, I was told that I was either very brave or very crazy. But I did it anyway. I knew nothing about the language, very tiny bit about the culture, and I had no one else here but the person that I came here for.

And yet, here I am now, comfortably living and integrating with the people here, making new friends, working in a permanent position, and speaking the country’s language–may I say–fluently.

Sometimes you just need that craziness. Push yourself out of your own boundaries and go for it, do whatever it is you’ve always wanted to do (as long as it doesn’t hurt other people, in any sense, of course). Get yourself out of your comfort zone, to make another, new comfort zone elsewhere.

In about 24 hours from now, I am doing exactly that. Setting things in motion, before I change my mind. And once I do it, I can’t undo any of it anymore, there’s no looking back, and I will just have to go through it no matter what.

Listen to me, being overly dramatic over a few teasers for my new book.

But it is important to me. This is, after all, CRAZY for me, to think that after only writing for myself for years, I’m suddenly letting it out for public. I feel so exposed, yet I want to do it. I feel scared, yet I’m ready.

The time is now.