I’m finally shifting gears, turning down the lights on my web design business to focus time and energy on launching my writing career. For everyone who knows me, this has been a long time coming.
I finished early drafts of my novel 9 years ago, and it’s been in a publishable state for at least 4 years. But it’s also been that long since I last read my manuscript so I’m making one more thorough pass on edits before heading to publication.
In the meantime, there is a lot of other work to be done. I’ve been quitely working on my author site, and I’m excited that I can finally make it public.
The first barrier to launch was getting approval for the book title. BURIED BY THE SOUND is a killer lyric from the band Sponge, and I wanted to get permission before using it.
Recently I reached out to Vin Dombroski, frontman for Sponge, and he graciously granted permission to use the lyric. That means the book has an official title and the website a catchy domain name. (I’ll probably double down with an author domain at some point, but the obvious michaeleverett.com is already taken. More on that as I figure it out.)
The next step to launching the website was to have samples of the book ready for public consumption. I’m pleased to announce that is also done. You can now read—and share!—the prologue online and download additional chapters when you sign up for my newsletter.
Why a newsletter? Well, it’s critical for every author to build an audience. I want to be able to connect to the people reading my work and update them when I release new stories. Obviously, I’ll be building other channels on social media and tying those in to the website as I go. But I think this is a good start.