Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Bryan.
Hi Amy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Prior to the pandemic, I spent 15 years in hospitality marketing. I had recently moved to a new company in October of 2019 and by March 2020, I was furloughed.
Since writing had been a big part of my life through college and in my first couple of jobs after graduation, my husband suggested that I write a book while I looked for a new job. He gave me the idea for a group of kids who go trick or treating in the mid-’80s when rumors of razor blades in candy was rampant and hospitals were offering X-rays as a safeguard.
What started off as a distraction during a tough time turned into months of refreshing my memory what life was like in the 80s, developing characters, outlining plots, and writing. When the manuscript was done, I started researching how to get published, only to find out that without the right contacts it’s borderline impossible. So, I took the advice of other self-published authors and set about getting the book out there myself.
There were hurdles. Finding a cover designer derailed the project for a few months. And I never noticed how many details there are in a book that require someone to make decisions. My daughter and I went through countless books on her shelf to figure out the best approach to ensure my book looked professional. But when the final product was ready and I could tell the world how to buy my middle-grade adventure, it made all of the challenges worthwhile.
Today I’m back in the travel industry in a full-time job, but the dream remains that I can turn writing into my career someday. It’s funny how what I thought was terrible news gave me the chance to do something I never could have dreamed I’d be able to. Incidentally, it also fulfilled my first-grade teacher’s prediction: that I was most likely to write a children’s book.
So today, when people ask me for interesting details about what appears to be a relatively mundane life, I can honestly say that I owned a vintage arcade in college, I earned a first-degree blackbelt in taekwondo in my 40s and I’m a self-published author.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
While I love to write, it wasn’t something I’d had the luxury of doing around my job and being a mom. So, when I was furloughed and found myself for the first time in my adult life with free space on my calendar, writing was the natural way to fill my time. But it turns out that writing is by far the easiest part of getting a book on a shelf. I had to research everything from what fonts, cover designs, pen names, and formatting software created a professional-looking book to how to distribute and market the end product. Finding an editor was easy, my former college roommate is an editor. But finding a cover designer was a bang-your-head-on-the-wall exercise in trial and error. Then there’s everything from how to copyright, price your book and build author profiles in various platforms. Having a publishing house would certainly be easier, but I heard too many horror stories about books languishing in development and never coming to life. So, I took the path that is perhaps more difficult but ensured that my kid would have a copy of my book in her hands to read before she was too old to care.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
While the advent of Amazon and other print-on-demand services have made it easier to self-publish, it also dilutes the field with work that is poorly written, edited, or illustrated. While I had a limited budget to create my book, I never sacrificed quality for speed to market or just to finish and be done with it. I’m proud of the writing, editing, and cover design. I also love my pen name: Stevie Alexander. It’s much funkier than my real name and both parts of it are a twist on special people or dogs in my life. I think my self-published book could sit alongside others at Barnes and Noble or other retailers. I hope others find my characters as compelling and full of life as my early readers.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I’ve learned from a life perspective is that challenges are what you make them. I could have sat around and been depressed about losing a job that I loved, and honestly, I almost did. But instead, I was fortunate enough to have a dormant passion that turned into a fun project and a book that my kid loved to read.
Pricing:
- $10.99 paperback
- $7.99 ebook
Contact Info:
- Email: steviealexander.author@gmail.com
- Website: amazon.com/RA-D8-Halloween-Hypothesis-Stevie-Alexander/dp/1737010402/
- Instagram: steviealexander_author
- Facebook: facebook.com/steviealexanderauthor
- Twitter: @stevie_author
- Other: @stevie.alexander tiktok
Image Credits
Germaine Vlok
