Finally! A Publishing Update!

In Which I Discuss BTVP and Banish Imposter Syndrome

I began this week with good intentions. Immediately after writing last week’s post (which I was immensely proud of, even though it didn’t get the most views), I had the idea to do another post about popular tropes in fantasy.

Alas, it did not happen. I was blindsided by the dreaded process known as formatting, which sapped all my creative energy, as well as my desire to look at a computer screen for any longer than necessary.

So, if you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on Underworld journeys, stay tuned for another week.

Since I’m severely lacking creativity today, I decided to give a BTVP update.

If you’re new to Lady of the Larke, BTVP is short for Beyond the Vanishing Point, a medieval fantasy book series that I have written and am currently in the process of self-publishing.

I’ve held off on giving updates, because nothing is set in stone yet. I can’t give an official release date because there are still a couple variables, and I don’t want to do a title reveal until I can also show the cover—and considering I don’t exactly have a cover yet, that’s going to be a little bit.

But! Don’t let that make you think it’s going to be some long wait until my debut novel is out in the world. I’m currently in the process of formatting, and I’m working with an extremely talented cover artist. And after that’s done, I really don’t have much more to do before publication. My hope—hope—is for this book to release into the world sometime at the end of this summer.

I’m going to be honest with you. It’s frightening to be actively working on publishing. BTVP has been so near and dear to my heart for pretty much my entire adult life. Writing is an escape of sorts for me, and so BTVP became an instrument to process growing up, friendships, having a calling in life, and walls I didn’t even know I was putting up. Not to mention situations that kept popping up in my life that were strangely similar to the ones I was writing. I learned things about myself that I never knew. I thought through things I was observing in the world around me, trying to understand them. I poured my heart and soul into my characters and let them lead the story onward.

Now to put all that into the hands of—well, anyone? That’s terrifying.

But the even bigger fear is the nagging thought that says, “Maybe you’re not ready.”

As I was formatting, I broke down crying at one point because I was afraid my writing wasn’t “good enough.” I decided on self-publishing after receiving three rejections from publishers. I know, I know, that’s not a lot compared to many extremely popular authors. And that’s where the voice in the back of my head comes in.

“You’re not being patient enough,” it whispers. “It still needs work. It wasn’t good enough for those publishers, so why are you putting it out now, when you’ll probably regret it later?”

That’s when I grit my teeth and remind myself of a few things. The first rejection letter I got was actually amazing. It was unlike any of the other ones, because it was full of feedback. They saw potential, but said it still needed work, and told me specifically what to work on.

And you know what? I took their advice. I rewrote portions of the book. I finished the entire series. I shortened the book. But in the end, the reason I decided not to try again with them in the future was because what my vision was didn’t seem to fit what they were looking for.

The next two were pretty straightforward: “This isn’t what we’re looking for right now.” “We haven’t had success with anything in a medieval time period.”

That, in the end, is why I decided to self-publish. Not out of laziness, or not wanting to take a publisher’s advice. Because I was writing something unique that doesn’t fit in a box. That makes it very hard for a business to market and sell.

Plus, the age I was writing for was kind of all over the place. It started out writing for my 14-year-old self who couldn’t find enough clean YA fantasy books to read. But as I got older and matured, so did my writing. While I didn’t write anything inappropriate that a 14-year-old shouldn’t read, the tone grew heavier. Struggles got more real. Hope became harder to see. I began incorporating concepts into the lore (largely inspired by C.S. Lewis) that I definitely didn’t grasp at 14.

I’ve talked a bit about how I’ve wrestled to find a balance between showing darkness and not getting lost in it. The later books in the series—written in my early 20s as opposed to my late teens—got darker. Namely, portions of the fourth book and the prequel(s)¹.

I don’t want that to turn younger teens away from reading it, but the reality is that I’m not writing for just them anymore. My hope is that it will be interesting for all ages, and that as my younger audience grows up and rereads, they’ll catch things they didn’t the first time.

But all that is hard to market, too. What do you mean, it’s YA but appropriate for Middle Grade readers…and oh yeah, adults have read it and enjoyed it too?

My vision for BTVP is not simple, by any stretch, and it certainly doesn’t fit in a box. The real reason I decided to self-publish was so I could retain control over that.

To wrap this up, as I’m sure many of you have caught on, I’m rereading The Lord of the Rings right now. I finished The Two Towers about an hour ago, and I was struck by the moment when Sam has to make the heartwrenching decision to leave Frodo, who he believes to be dead, take the Ring, and go on to Mordor himself.

I think that’s one of the biggest moments in Sam’s character development, but what stood out to me this time was how Sam, throughout the whole thing, is never certain that he made the right decision. As he goes onward to Mordor, he’s still debating in his mind what he should have done. He even tries to go back, but by the time he gets to the spot he left Frodo, the Orcs have already taken him. Sam is still convinced that he made the wrong decision, that he should have stayed by his master’s side and died protecting him.

But what Sam only briefly considers is that if that was the case, the Quest would have failed. The only reason Sauron didn’t get the Ring in that moment is because Sam had taken it and was actually wearing it when the Orcs came. Sam might have doubted his decision, but he stuck with it until there was no going back.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be fully comfortable with my decision to self-publish, and I certainly don’t know if it was the right one. But if I let the doubt and imposter syndrome freeze me, I’ll never take any steps towards publication. So I’m going to keep going, and trust the rest into God’s hands.

After all, He was the One who put it on my heart to write BTVP in the first place.

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

1. As of now, there is one completed prequel, which I plan to publish directly after the main four BTVP books, but there’s also one more in the works that I would like to publish alongside those five. The problem is that it’s very lore-heavy and so different than the others that I’m still uncertain whether it should be more of its own thing or not, or even if I can ever get this story into words. The main four-book series, plus the two prequels, is what I have termed “BTVP: Extended Edition.” A play, of course, on the superior cuts of the LOTR movies.