Saturday, April 06, 2013

Joshua news


Well, it has been one year since my first novel Joshua was published. To date it has sold 6,641 copies, several hundred more were borrowed from Amazon's lending library, and 24,783 given away free during a recent 5 day promotion!

On Kindle it went to the number one position in Men's Adventure category and the top ten in Action & Adventure. Now, after my recent promotion it is back in the charts again and currently has a 4.3 star rating (out of 5) on Amazon.

All in all, not bad for a story that nearly didn't get started.

I had the initial concept for Joshua several years ago. I thought it was a great idea but never really got past the "working on it in my head" stage. I never wrote anything, except for some websites and blogs, what did I know about writing fiction? I kicked the idea around awhile but it remained inside me, unfinished. I didn't think it could get worse but it did. Later on I found that my idea was similar to a very famous book, although somehow I had managed to never hear about it. At that point Joshua nearly died, I knew it would be considered by some a "rip-off" of it, or at least unfairly compared to it.

Eventually, in the summer of '10 I decided to just do it. I sat down at my computer one day and began. The idea I had in my head for so long had to come out. From the first I thought what I was writing was good, but what did I know? Maybe I was deluding myself. After a while I scrounged up enough courage to post it on my site as a serial. Honestly I was quite nervous; I didn't know what was going to happen. I was halfway expecting readers demand that I pull my story because it was stinking up the internetz.

But the opposite happened. Readers started telling me it was good. They said write more! Finally, with enough encouragement I thought that maybe this could eventually be a "real" book. I started working towards that goal.

Now here I am a year later. My second novel has just been published and I am about to start a third. All because of a simple little idea that kept nagging at my mind and some good people that encouraged me to finish it. Thanks.

4 comments:

Jason said...

John - we got the books in the mail last week - thank you! I have been spreading the word about your new book to friends and others that might enjoy it. Great book and I am already looking forweard to the next!

Jason said...

forweard >> forward!

Wilson said...

Thanks Jason - and thanks for the review. I hope you and the better half were happy with what we discussed via email. Best I could do.

DES said...

Congratulations on your success!