CHRISTMAS ADVENT SPECTACULAR #1: Appaloosa Summer by Tudor Robins - GUEST POST + GIVEAWAY

Appaloosa Summer by Tudor Robins

SERIES: Island Trilogy #1

GENRE: YA Fiction

GOODREADS ~ AMAZON ~ AUTHOR ~ TWITTER ~ FACEBOOK 

Sixteen-year-old Meg Traherne has never known loss. Until the beautiful, talented horse she trained herself, drops dead underneath her in the show ring.

Jared Strickland has been living with loss ever since his father died in a tragic farming accident.

Meg escapes from her grief by changing everything about her life; moving away from home to spend her summer living on an island in the St. Lawrence River, scrubbing toilets and waiting on guests at a B&B.

Once there, she meets Jared; doing his best to keep anything else in his life from changing.

When Jared offers Meg a scruffy appaloosa mare out of a friend’s back field, it’s the beginning of a journey that will change both of them by the end of the summer.

GUEST POST - Tudor Robins

My “Guinea Pig” book

 Right now, you’re probably looking at the cover of Appaloosa Summer and thinking “Hmmm … that looks like a book about horses, not guinea pigs,” and you would be completely and one-hundred per cent right.

Although it’s my best-known, and best-selling novel Appaloosa Summer isn’t my first novel – that’s Objects in Mirror. You might think the first novel an author publishes would be the one to change her life, and in many cases, you’d probably be right, but for me it was my second book – the book I experimented with; that became my “guinea pig” – and I’ll tell you why.

Indie Publishing (or self-publishing, but “indie” sounds so much more fun!)

 Objects in Mirror was traditionally published – that is, I submitted it to a publisher, they accepted it, and they published it (I’ve just condensed about three years of angst into one sentence – you can thank me later!).

That same publisher also read Appaloosa Summer, also liked it, and also expressed strong interest in publishing it. But they took their time about sending me a contract.

And while they took their time, I read about publishing. I considered my options. I thought about the kind of writer I am, and the kind of person I am. I thought about what satisfies me, and what frustrates me.

I decided to publish Appaloosa Summer myself.

This seemed like a huge decision for many reasons. I had fought for so long, and so hard to land a publishing deal; was I really just going to walk away after one book? Well, yes.

So, I had to tell my publisher. Yikes.

And then I had to do all the things they warned me it would be hard to do on my own. I had to get the book edited on my own. I had to get a cover and the interior of the book designed. I had to promote and sell it.

And, guess what? I did all those things. I did them one step at a time, but I did them all. I published a book that’s become loved by readers and has sold far, far more copies than my first book.

Learning new things

 So, as indicated above, this book taught me (or forced me to teach myself) many new things. I learned how to source cover images. I learned how to find freelancers (cover designers, copy-editors, interior designers, etc.) and I learned how to work productively with them.

I decided I could figure out how to code an eBook myself, and I learned how to do that. Now I code all my own eBooks.

I figured out what kinds of promotions work, and which ones don’t (I’m still learning).

These are all things I wouldn’t have learned without Appaloosa Summer. And the list doesn’t stop there – there are new things to try every single day.

Meeting new people

 In addition to the amazing team of editors and designers and promotional people I’ve assembled around me, I’ve also met other writers.

Appaloosa Summer was my ticket into a community of writers who also write about horses, and who have similar aims, goals, and ideas.

Because we all indie publish, we’re all free to make the decisions we want to about our books and our writing careers, and one of the decisions we’ve made is to join in a collaborative group called Horseback Reads, so we can better connect our readers with each other’s work.

It’s fun, supportive, and rewarding and I wouldn’t be here without my guinea-pig book.

Trying new things

 As well as starting Horseback Reads – which I never, ever would have done before publishing Appaloosa Summer, I’ve also done other fun things.

One of the coolest was recording a podcast audio book of the novel. I spent every Monday last winter in a soundproof booth in a recording studio, reading my own book into a microphone.

It was such a great learning experience for me, and at the end I had something great to offer my readers, and it’s really exciting that the audio book has now had nearly 20,000 downloads!

If you’d also like to listen to Appaloosa Summer as an audio book, read by me, it’s absolutely free and available in different formats on Podiobooks.com.

And, as a special added bonus, if you’d like to read Appaloosa Summer, it’s available as a free Kindle download today only. Click here to get it!

If you have any questions about books, writing, or anything, please feel free to email me – I love hearing from readers!