How do we come up with ideas for our books?
I don’t know about you all, but I first came up with the idea for my Bermuda’s Secret Book series way back when I was eleven years old (I’m 55 now). I had just been read the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis in my fifth grade class by our teacher who read all seven books in the series a chapter or two at a time one hour each day.
That was what first planted the seed in me that I would like to write something like that. Eventually, I would watch the Sci-fi Series, Battlestar Galactica. I have also always been a Civil War enthusiast too. I am originally from Texas, so while in the Army in the late 80s / early 90s, I was a Civil War reenactor in the 9th Texas Infantry. I have also been fascinated by stories of the Bermuda Triangle and the strange and unexplained disappearances that occurred there. (All of these elements came together to form the eventual series).
It wasn’t until my 20th year and I was in the Army that I actually got my original manuscript done for what was then going to be just a single large novel. After messing around a while on how to ge tthis published and shipping out one manuscript to a pulisher, who I immediately got a rejection letter from, I lost hope–I was young and naive, after all.
This manuscript was finally stored in an old briefcase along with original artwork which I had hand-drawn during my youth to accompany it in some sort of appendix when life got in the way, as it usually does for all of us at one time or another.
Fast forward twenty-five years, when I had the misfortune of going into the hospital for almost a month which ultimately culminated in me losing over half of my right foot, and I was unable to return to my business of being a locksmith for 8-10 weeks.
This time of being laid-up resurrected, at long last, my zeal for writing, and I remembered the manuscript and drawings stored in that old briefcase. Furthermore, upon reviewing and refreshing my memory about that long ago manuscript, I decided that I needed to write a back history of where that fantasy world in that manuscript came from.
Enter the Bermuda’s Secret Series
The original Bermuda’s Secret manuscript (in the above image) was written in spiral notebooks long-hand and then transcribed over on a typewiter before the time of online self-publishing and the likes of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and other similar platforms.
The new Bermuda’s Secret Series was penned on legal tablets and then transcribed from 2016 to 2020 to the computer were the first books were published using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.
When I wrote the original manuscript at the age of 20, the only thing close to that then were Vanity presses where you could submit your work, and they would cause you to buy X number of copies and then they would ship the finished product to you.
When this was done, you were essentially stuck with what you got, and you had better hope that you edited everything correctly, etc. You would then have various Christmas and birthday gifts to give out because you then might have realized that you had no one to market the books to.
The only other option was to start making many copies of your bulky manuscript and start bulk mailing to publishing houses to see who might take a look. Like I said, earlier in my life, I had done this only ONCE! This was akin to winning the lottery if you did manage to get published. Not to mention, it was also incredibly expensive and very time-consuming.
Make no mistake, it is still hard to succeed in the writing business unless someone high up in the publishing field takes note and happens to like your material.
As an author or budding author, you need to have that fire in the belly and passion in order to achieve your goals, and there are very few that go the distance once they figure out that there is hard work–and many times–heartbreak that will occur before you might ultimately succeed, if you ever do!
Think on these things as you embark on this journey and prepare yourself for what you might have to face!
Until then, Keep Writing!
