Kingdom of the Infinity Realm

Earlier this year, we made a tough decision that sent us down a long and eventful rabbit hole. In January, we decided to review all the feedback we had received so far from reviews, editorial sites, personal feedback, pigeon carrier, etc., and identify areas of opportunity. Using that feedback, we then spent every spare moment over the next five months revising book one to improve character growth and connection, cut unnecessary fluff, and round out the plot.

As first-time authors, we will be the first to admit that we’ve learned a lot through writing a book together. Heck, when we first started out, we head-hopped repeatedly, creating a jarring effect for the reader (if you don’t know that term, you should Google it… it’s fascinating!). So, while with a traditional publisher, creating a second version of the book may be frowned upon, as self-published authors, we had the flexibility to take advantage of the opportunity.

To Publish or Not To Publish?

Speaking of publishing… at the exact same time we finalized the edits to the second version of book one, we had the opportunity to submit our book to Histria Books, an independent publisher. Pretty cool – right!?

The downside – you sign a commitment letter, saying you will not make any major edits or submit to another publisher for up to SIX MONTHS while they review your book. With book one under such a long editorial review, we turned our attention to writing the next book while we waited to hear back. Over the last six months, we have written and edited almost twenty-five chapters of book two (it’s going to be pretty awesome!).

At the end of September, we were thrilled to receive an offer from Histria to publish our book! We immediately began reviewing the legal contract… which turned out to be much more involved than we anticipated. Side note: If you can spend nine hours together redlining a legal contract and still be married, you deserve a prize. We will get into the specifics another time, but after a lot of back and forth, we could not in good faith sign the contract and move forward.

What Now…

So now we are back at it with Book 1 and Book 2! For the first book, we plan to republish the second version with a new cover (that’s another long story and something we’ve learned a lot about)! We will simultaneously be working on wrapping up book two, which is shaping up to be pretty epic. As always, we appreciate all the continued support and look forward to reconnecting after a much longer dark period than we anticipated.

-Mark & Sarah