Trusting the Unfoldment Process

For the latter part of the year it’s been about trusting. What do I mean?

After four rewrites of the book Fantastic!, there came a time where I had to trust editor Melanie Mulhall with Dragonheart to transform my writing into a great and inspiring story. At first there was resistance. I believed the book was in perfect order the way I had written it. After being told by Melanie it needed work, I was offended and hurt emotionally. She was correct, the book needed work.

The first thing I had to do was embrace, trust and allow the unfoldment process. It was difficult to talk about pornography, sex, drugs, abuse, molestation and everything else with a stranger, especially a female. There were times I got severely emotional talking about my story.

Each time I took a deep breath and trusted Melanie to put all the pieces together of the story so it flowed and kept the reader engaged. During the process she said many times “It took courage to write what you did”. I didn’t think much about it, until I heard from others.

I was rejected by some people because of my past engagement to pornography and my honesty about it. I faced many rejections during the process, and it sparked an emotional nerve of wanting to quit. I kept telling myself “It’s not who I’m today”. I wrote the truth, however at times I wanted to hide because I kept worrying “what will others think” especially since I have been praying for a female relationship.

It was during these emotional outbursts when a healing of transformational breakthrough, and the dark shadow that I had been hiding, no longer had power over me. Little by little, reliving the story over and over allowed me to be free. I remained focused and trusting everything is unfolding as it should.

I was able to meet with Mary Walewski of Buy The Book Marketing.  She coached me during this painful time, along with marketing ideas and inspiring me to share my story.

 

More Trusting

When the manuscript was completed it was time to search out endorsements for the book. More trusting would be required that the right people would come forward. At first there was resistance as I was scared, ashamed and afraid of more rejection to criticize my story. To help with the resistance I relied on prayer, practitioner prayers, and kept telling myself “it’s not who I’m today”.

I was on Facebook and took a chance one evening and sent a personal message to Kathleen McGowan, New York Times Best Selling author of The Expected One had been following her for a few years. I said, “Kathleen, I’ve been following your posts especially the ones of the loss of your husband. At times I can feel your pain, as I lost my wife 10 years ago in an auto accident and at times the pain was unbearable. I am inspired at your openness and courage to move forward. I was wondering would you be open to reading a manuscript I wrote about what I endured during the loss of my wife? If you find it interesting would you be open for an endorsement? Thanks for reading and your time.”

Within seconds she replied back “of course I would”. I was completely shocked, and inspired that she agreed so fast. She inspired me to search out twenty five others. A few replied with “no”, and it hurt, others said “yes”. Some followed through as being too busy. Those who did reply back made me feel I was blessed. I received ten endorsements, and trusted these where the ones that were meant to be.

 

Continuing to Trust

I attended a CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association) meeting on Saturday April 19, 2014 where they had six panelists of experts in the field of publishing; marketing, editing, and book cover artists. They asked for any brave authors who were open for ideas. I felt a nudge to speak out but stopped out of fear.  At the last minute I shouted out, “Have room for one other?”.

My heart was racing and sweating when one of the panelists looked at my cover and said “It needs to be redesigned. Sorry, but the cover looks as if it’s a stock photo, the mix of text centered and left justification  needs correcting. Another panelist said “You have a killer subtitle however it’s hard to read as it blends in with the sun.” I was somewhat hurt, but knew she was correct. It was a stock photo and my design that I tried to convey to the book artist.

I contacted Nick Zelinger with nzgraphics and explained to him what had happened along with Melanie Mulhall. I told Nick, “You are the expert at book cover designs and I trust you will come up with a design that fits the expression of the book.” He created five new designs. I then reached out to the men’s council at Mile Hi Church and they voted for this cover.

The key here was to trust people, trust the unfoldment, and trust God. All the rejection was making me stronger, so that I can stand in the truth of who I am.

The new cover created a “pop” causing the reader to pick-up the book, turn it over and be inspired.

I’m very pleased with the new cover and it really does express the impact of the story and of course, it is FANTASTIC!

Does it make a FANTASTIC statement for you? Have you trusted the unfoldment process in your life? Please comment below. I appreciate your thoughts and would love your feedback. Thank you.

 

Yours truly

Mr. Fantastic!

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