When I first started writing I was about 8 or 9 and it was very different from my newest book, Mission 49. Not only the genre but the format, everything was in one big jumbled up paragraph, no spaces after a sentence ends, barely any quotation marks when someone spoke and it wasn’t until I realized, wait, this is not how the books I read are written and with a little help from my parents I had somehow edited to be a bit more read-able. For a while, that book didn’t go anywhere and I had started writing mini books just for fun with my friend, Melissa, who also enjoyed writing with me and we kept that up for a while until our “mini books” turned into novels with many chapters. One of the very first books I remember writing with her was a tale of a sun prince and a moon princess who fought over who reins the land. It wasn’t perfect but it was our book. Soon, we had gained a love for fantasy books and together we wrote a book called The Forbidden Cities. It’s funny because it was very similar to one of my favorite book series called The Keeper of the Lost Cities with VERY similar plots and since I hadn’t completely wrapped my head around copyright I showed all my friends and family my work in progress. At that time Melissa had finished reading the book and said she’d like to help and that was the real turn of events, it went from a rip-off from The Keeper of the Lost Cities to a completely different story and truthfully I don’t think I would be here without her. We had really wanted to publish that book but we weren’t able to at the time because covid hit, we were both busy with school and grew apart for a while. Then I started writing Mission 49 with a newfound determination to write a book worthy of publishing unlike all my other failed, uncompleted books. It took a while, lots of writer’s block and stumped days but I pushed myself to keep writing even if it was random ideas. By November of 2022, I had finished the book. Of course, with many mistakes and it was not edited but by the hope by the end of the year to find a publishing company. We had set to work to find a suitable company for us with a good price as well but it wasn’t as easy as you’d think it was. A few months passed by and finding a publishing company was set aside for a while and I continued writing fun books with Melissa. June of 2023, we had bought a house and moved in and the new house inspired me to write a sequel of Mission 49 which I had unfortunately lost but it had given me the little push I needed to edit Mission 49 and start looking for a publishing company and one had reached out to us, they were professional and legit and they had loved my book, the only problem was, they asked for a big fee and little commission, meaning it would take a while to re-attain the money we gave them so we had declined and soon was contacted by another company, yet again they had enjoyed my book but it wasn’t a fit. It had upset me a bit but I knew not to give up. July 2024, I had received an email from Milton & Hugo saying they saw I was looking for a publishing company and they wanted to work with me. By July 22, it was settled. I was part of Milton & Hugo. It was rough at first, balancing school and editing but I had done it. A few months passed by and the interior of my book was finished and it was time to do my cover. They had offered to do my cover but I wasn’t entirely satisfied so I found a very competent artist who could do the job. She got it done in a week and the art was on-point. From there, I sent the cover to my publishing consultant who sent it to the production fulfillment officer and soon I’ll be getting the first copy of my book! Very excited!
