I'm Nobody: Behind the Scenes
There's a lot going on between the lines of I'm Nobody, more back story than in any other project I've worked on. So I wanted to take a few minutes to give you a "behind the scenes" look at what was going on in my head as the novel began to take shape.
Dedication
When I began writing my novel I'm Nobody, I wasn't planning on selling a million copies. If that were the case I would have written a novel about One Direction meeting vampires or something else more appealing to the middle grade/YA demographic. I definitely wouldn't have written about an agoraphobic protagonist named Caleb Reed who believes he's getting notes from reclusive poet Emily Dickinson.
But from the start I did plan on one thing, I was going to finish. The project was just too important to give up on. You see, my big sister and biggest supporter had written me an email. As we often did with our big creative ideas, I had sent her the first few chapters, and her last line to me was "I can't wait to read the ending!"
Two weeks later, my sister Grace died peacefully in her sleep, and that sentence became priceless, as those words were her last to me.
So when it was time to add the dedication, the words came easy:
To Grace, hoping you can read this in heaven
Setting
As I was writing the novel, an abandoned mansion forced its way into the forefront, becoming a main character rather than an accessory.
- It was a ghost that mansion - a Victorian style, hundred-year old monster watching his every move through boarded up eyes. Paint peeled and abandoned, it had rotted away for decades on the large, weed enveloped lot directly across the street from Caleb's bedroom window. - (I'm Nobody, Chapter One)
It wasn't supposed to be that way. It just kind of happened, and I think I know why. I wrote most of the novel in Europe, in, you guessed it, "a hundred-year-old…ghost of a mansion." Well, the house in Sweden we had rented last summer wasn't quite a mansion, but it was as old as Caleb's arch nemesis on Evergreen Lane. And it was definitely paint peeled, yet not quite as abandoned looking as the one in my novel. There were cracks though, cracks that let the mosquitoes in at night causing me to have to sleep with my Bose noise reducing headphones on one occasion. It was there on a dining room table, overlooking a tiny pond that the mansion came to life in the pages of I'm Nobody.
Ebooks
When Rosa Parks was asked why she decided to make her history making stand on that Alabama bus over fifty years ago - staying seated instead of obeying that bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white male rider - she answered "I was quite tired."
No, I'm not about to tell you that this novel is going to make history like Rosa Parks. But if you ask me why I decided to publish an ebook this time around, rather than with a major publisher as in the past, I'll tell you the same thing as Rosa. I published an ebook because "I was quite tired."
After leaving my literary agency, one that focused on the CBA market, to seek out an agency that focused on the ABA market, I began pitching I'm Nobody to the major agencies in New York. A couple were immediately interested in the project, including Writer's House, the same agency that represents books such as the Twilight series and classic books by author's such as Judy Blume. The problem was, the novel was written in the first person perspective (which is usually my favorite perspective to write in), they felt it was too deep of a novel to be in the perspective of a thirteen year-old and suggested I change it to third person. The agent I was dealing with there made complete sense. As readers will find, this novel tackles some extremely difficult issues such as death, grieving, and faith - issues that can only be presented with a narrator carefully leading the way.
I took her advice and moved the novel into third person, a task that was not all that easy to do, and it took several months. By the end of the process I was "quite tired" and so I decided to simply publish it as an ebook, rather than send it back to that agent or other New York literary agents.
A dumb move? Maybe, but once again I was tired. I had been marketing my last Thomas Nelson book series for so long, then writing this book, looking for an agent, and even writing yet another book (hopefully coming soon). I guess I was just tired of being an author and just wanted to be a writer for a change.
And to be a writer without readers seems pretty silly. don’t you think?
Dedication
When I began writing my novel I'm Nobody, I wasn't planning on selling a million copies. If that were the case I would have written a novel about One Direction meeting vampires or something else more appealing to the middle grade/YA demographic. I definitely wouldn't have written about an agoraphobic protagonist named Caleb Reed who believes he's getting notes from reclusive poet Emily Dickinson.
But from the start I did plan on one thing, I was going to finish. The project was just too important to give up on. You see, my big sister and biggest supporter had written me an email. As we often did with our big creative ideas, I had sent her the first few chapters, and her last line to me was "I can't wait to read the ending!"
Two weeks later, my sister Grace died peacefully in her sleep, and that sentence became priceless, as those words were her last to me.
So when it was time to add the dedication, the words came easy:
To Grace, hoping you can read this in heaven
Setting
As I was writing the novel, an abandoned mansion forced its way into the forefront, becoming a main character rather than an accessory.
- It was a ghost that mansion - a Victorian style, hundred-year old monster watching his every move through boarded up eyes. Paint peeled and abandoned, it had rotted away for decades on the large, weed enveloped lot directly across the street from Caleb's bedroom window. - (I'm Nobody, Chapter One)
It wasn't supposed to be that way. It just kind of happened, and I think I know why. I wrote most of the novel in Europe, in, you guessed it, "a hundred-year-old…ghost of a mansion." Well, the house in Sweden we had rented last summer wasn't quite a mansion, but it was as old as Caleb's arch nemesis on Evergreen Lane. And it was definitely paint peeled, yet not quite as abandoned looking as the one in my novel. There were cracks though, cracks that let the mosquitoes in at night causing me to have to sleep with my Bose noise reducing headphones on one occasion. It was there on a dining room table, overlooking a tiny pond that the mansion came to life in the pages of I'm Nobody.
Ebooks
When Rosa Parks was asked why she decided to make her history making stand on that Alabama bus over fifty years ago - staying seated instead of obeying that bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white male rider - she answered "I was quite tired."
No, I'm not about to tell you that this novel is going to make history like Rosa Parks. But if you ask me why I decided to publish an ebook this time around, rather than with a major publisher as in the past, I'll tell you the same thing as Rosa. I published an ebook because "I was quite tired."
After leaving my literary agency, one that focused on the CBA market, to seek out an agency that focused on the ABA market, I began pitching I'm Nobody to the major agencies in New York. A couple were immediately interested in the project, including Writer's House, the same agency that represents books such as the Twilight series and classic books by author's such as Judy Blume. The problem was, the novel was written in the first person perspective (which is usually my favorite perspective to write in), they felt it was too deep of a novel to be in the perspective of a thirteen year-old and suggested I change it to third person. The agent I was dealing with there made complete sense. As readers will find, this novel tackles some extremely difficult issues such as death, grieving, and faith - issues that can only be presented with a narrator carefully leading the way.
I took her advice and moved the novel into third person, a task that was not all that easy to do, and it took several months. By the end of the process I was "quite tired" and so I decided to simply publish it as an ebook, rather than send it back to that agent or other New York literary agents.
A dumb move? Maybe, but once again I was tired. I had been marketing my last Thomas Nelson book series for so long, then writing this book, looking for an agent, and even writing yet another book (hopefully coming soon). I guess I was just tired of being an author and just wanted to be a writer for a change.
And to be a writer without readers seems pretty silly. don’t you think?
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