I am a storyteller, one who never refers to herself as a writer. I know enough about the English language to get by, and I have published a book (more about that later) but my strength is the story, in the crafting of it, and the telling of it.
Two years ago, I penned the first sentence of a story titled, Bullet Bungalow. A month later, after typing the words, The End, I added the words, More to come… Surprisingly, there was more to come, namely, Netti Barn and Cutters Cove. To date, there are 16 stories that follow the lives of the Mahoney-Maxwell clan, and the cast of characters who help light their way, or darken their doorstep. When I wrote the final words of the third story, I was filled with pride and an eagerness to get them out there — for all the world to see. I soon learned that there were many people who needed to read my manuscripts before the world had a crack at my books.
I found an editor and followed his advice, “Change your fonts, use Times New Roman, abandon the novella idea, combine these stories into one book, don’t use chapter headings, use chapter numbers, and don’t use the word, boobs.” Wait? – What? My desire to present my stories in the right way, whatever the hell that means, coupled with a huge dose of inexperience, nudged me toward making decisions that ultimately turned my dream into a nightmare. In the process of trying to make things better, I made them worse. I took my novellas, hacked away parts of each of the stories, and combined them into a single book, a 350 page book.
Then I found an editor, a great editor, who helped me make that book into a really good book — one I self-published, then self-unpublished a few weeks later. I knew something was wrong when the overriding feeling from my publishing experience was disappointment. How was it possible that the dream I had nurtured since grade school left me feeling so unfulfilled? The answer was simple — I didn’t publish my book. I did not write a 350 page book, I wrote three 200 page novellas.
When I pulled the threads on all of this, I realized that I never told my new editor that I had altered my stories. Correction: I never told my new editor that I had disrespected my work by walking away from my original format. When I came clean, and told her I wanted to publish my work as novellas, she encouraged me to do so — and in doing so, I have put the story back into my stories.
I am ready to gift them to the universe in their full and original form. I sincerely hope that those of you who turn the pages of a Pulling Threads book enjoy the story because, in the end, that’s what this writer had in mind when she first put pen to paper.