My novel The Closeted Life of Claude Hartel is published and is currently available on Amazon! People have been amazingly supportive and I am incredibly thankful. Friends and family are messaging me that they’ve ordered the book and are reading it, sending me pictures of the actual book in their hands or on their laps, ready to dig into the story of Jim and Claude Hartel. One of the most special parts of all of this is seeing my old students purchasing the book and reading it. I feel proud to say that I am “practicing what I teach.” I sometimes get a little nervous with the content of the book…I mean, it’s a young adult book, but there is some sexual stuff in there and I just wonder what it’ll be like for my students to read that stuff from their English teacher. Haha.
Anyways, my heart is full, that’s for sure! It’s truly a dream come true. But like any goal in life, I’m ready to accomplish the next one. It’s like a drug, publishing a book. It’s addictive this feeling of having my story heard by people. I wanna get my next story out into the world! Like now!
By the way, we’re doing an Author Q&A on Facebook on August 20th at 8:00 PM CST. Link is below. Read the book and join us in this conversation. It’ll be a book club discussion and an opportunity to ask me your nagging questions:
https://www.facebook.com/events/221163619134867/
So order the book today! I’d love to “see” you there:
Also, I chose the winners of the contest for $5 Amazon Gift Cards. I had about 150 people “like”, share, and/or comment on my post about The Closeted Life of Claude Hartel. Thank you to all of you that helped in spreading the word about my 1st novel.
As I stated, all profits from the book will be used to assist Adan and I in funding our surrogacy dreams. Things are happening quickly in that journey and we suddenly need a lot of money. LoL. It’s daunting and making me anxious. If you want to hear about that story of mine, check out my surrogacy blog “Joe Grows a Family.”
Oh, and my good friend Caitlin wrote a beautiful post about her personal experience with IVF. Emotional and raw and gorgeously written, Caitlin truly puts her heart out into the world, imploring women (and men) to connect and understand and inspire each other, especially those dealing with fertility complications. It is such a wonderful story and I’m so proud to know Cait! Check it out below:
https://joegrowsafamily.blogspot.com/2020/08/caits-story.html
Okay, back to writing…Jose Leyenda and the Wailing Woman is a middle grade horror mystery. I wrote it a couple years ago and have been polishing it up ever since. It’s pretty much all set to be published. I am having one more pair of eyes on the manuscript to check for grammar issues. I’m also working on the back cover write-up. In addition, I am currently searching for front cover designs. I use 99 Designs for this process and absolutely love it. If you’re into graphic design, you should totally research this website! How it works is that I put a description of my book on the website and designers submit cover designs. During this contest-like operation, I will work with the designers to cultivate my vision for the book. In the end, I’ll choose a winning design and pay them (of course). It’s a fun process and I’ll try to involve you guys if I can. Y’all can help choose the cover to my next novel like you did with The Closeted Life of Claude Hartel. Here is one option that already got submitted. I think it looks kinda cool. But not sure it’s visually captivating to middle school kids. I’d rather see something more cartoony or animated movie-like. Do you see a 12-year-old looking at this cover and simply dying to read it?
I am guessing I’ll have more about this book in the next few weeks. There’s something that’s been on my mind since I started writing this book and I’d enjoy digging deep into the topic. It has something to do with the notion of “cultural appropriation.” I don’t have time to write about that right now but I hopefully will soon.
This is supposed to be Book #1 in a planned series about a Mexican-American boy in Milwaukee who begins to notice that supernatural legends from Mexico are haunting his neighborhood. I need tagline or slogan ideas! Right now I have “This wasn’t Freddy or Jason — This was real.” I know. I don’t like it either. Help! Give me some ideas for the tagline. That’s probably hard to do when you haven’t read the book, huh?
After this book is published, I’ll have to see what I want to do next with my writing career. I do have half of the 2nd book in the Jose Leyenda Mysteries already written. So I could finish that. Or I can write my new novel about Lucki Sommers in the planned Death Drop Mysteries series. This would be a set of cozy novels about an amatuer sleuth who is also a drag queen. Both of these series ideas are super exciting to me and I am eager to start writing them. It’s just…I have very little time. And money. So I will really need to analyze which option would be best.
Either way, they say that authors, especially self-published ones, need to have a series nowadays to make any real money. Authors should be churning out two books a year if they want to make a living. A series of books encourages and almost forces readers to buy not just one of your books but many, turning it into an awesome way to earn money passively. I’d love to get to this level. However, I’d have to quit teaching and do writing full time. I adore teaching though and this would be a ginormous life decision. Ah! What do I do? Quit teaching and become a writer full time to truly see if I can make this work? Or keep juggling both careers and reaping the benefits of them both? What do you guys think I should do?
Alright. I think that’s it. One of these days I’ll write about something substantial. I just want to give my fans an update 🙂
Read a book today people! Peace!
Joe Neman : Writer 