Alright, gentle readers, time for an update. For those of you who didn't know, this past November, I took part in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. This is a competition wherein the contestants write a novel, 50,000 words or more, during the month of November. You're not competing directly against the other writers, more with yourself and the lil bastard in your head that tells you everything you're writing is crap. Anyway, I did it. I wrote a little over 50,000 words during November and claimed the top prize. In this case, one of the prizes was two free paperback copies of your book if you self published on a certain website.
So I did it. Sleepless Murder is now available on Amazon, both as paperback and on Kindle. And I'm conflicted about it. Let me break it down for you.
On the one hand, seeing "Brett Engetschwiler" on the cover of a book was nearly orgasmic. It's the realization of a dream I've had since the first grade. But once the novelty of that wore off, the whole thing left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. To be honest, it feels kind of like cheating the system. I mean sure, I put in the hours writing to get the manuscript done. I spent a couple days editing and futzing with it, which wasn't nearly enough time but I was on a deadline dictated by whoever does NaNoWriMo awards. So I published what, by all accounts, should never have seen the light of day.
Is it a terrible book? No, I do still think it's a good story and everybody who's read it has told me they enjoyed it. It just needs polishing. And so now I find myself going back to it like a jeweler with a rough-cut gemstone. Sure, it's pretty as it is, but it can be better. Time to break out the chisels and cutters and buffers and get to work.
Keeping in mind that this is the rough draft, if you are morbidly curious, you can purchase the current version of Sleepless Murder here.
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