The Author's Journey

This week my book Beloved I Love You So... has been entered into the Readers Favourite International Book Awards. the judging will take place over the next few months and I will know how it goes by September.

It feels a bit like when my son went to university and I wondered how the whole higher education thing would go. Would my son be successful? Would it be a good experience for him and me? What would happen as a result? 

And to some degree any creative project is a bit like a child. You invest such a lot of time, effort, blood , sweat and tears into the process. First the writing process, then the editing process and finally the marketing process. Like many writers I find the marketing process particularly challenging, followed by the editing process and then the writing process.

Beloved I Love You So... took quite a few months to write and in the beginning I was reluctant to even think of it as a book at all. It was simply therapy! But me and my big mouth meant I mentioned it to my editor and she said, "Send it to me!" and I did. 

She came back in her usual direct manner and said "You have to publish this, is it a really good book about love." It took some convincing, but finally I said yes. 

Why did I need convincing?

Mainly because it feels such a personal book. It is after all a memoir. It is real to me. It involves really deep, sometimes difficult emotions and it covers a period of my life and a love that lasted for forty years. That's a period of time longer than many marriages, certainly longer than mine - and covers more than half my life.

When love first arrives in our lives we have no idea where the journey will take us, and this is true for writing too.

We write the book, publish it and then let it fly out into the world. This week after three years, the book has come back with it's next step on the journey, and like any mother I am anxious for what happens next.

Keeping fingers (and toes) crossed for a successful outcome.

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Beloved I Love You So... 

One woman's great love story told in the letters she wrote Beloved, I Love You So is more than a memoir about love. It's a profound exploration of what it is to love in all its many nuances, depths, forms, symbols, and senses. This is a book that takes you on a very personal and multi-faceted voyage into that most human and, at the same time, most divine of emotions. When you have read the last letter, turned the last page of the book, and arrived at the end of your journey, you will discover your understanding of love has been immeasurably expanded and enriched. You will never experience love quite the same way again. You will be forever changed. A lyrical lesson in how to love and be loved.

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