Ali Cross Guest Post and GIVEAWAY of BECOME

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here on Sophia’s blog! She is awesome and I’m pretty
sure all of her readers are super cool too.

Sophia, thank you for having me, and for helping me celebrate the release of my book,
BECOME.

So, Sophia asked me to talk about how I came to self-publish, what my journey had been. Oh man, let me tell you—it has been quite the journey. And I’m not even talking about all the legwork that goes into bringing a book to life all by yourself. The formatting, the marketing, the uploading, the pricing, the marketing, the reviews, the sequels, and the marketing. All. By. Yourself. Or, if you’re lucky, you’ll do it the way I did—sharing some of the burden with a handful of other rockin’ indie authors.

Then there’s the whole journey-of-the-mind. The one in which you say (lots of times) “Oh my gosh! Am I really going to self-publish? Am I doing this? For realz?” A couple deep breaths. “Seriously? Are you SURE?”

With heavy dashes of intermittent terror and euphoria.

Because self publishing is terrifying. And completely awesome.

Right around the time I decided to go forward with the independent release, BECOME took second place in the full manuscript division of the League of Utah Writers’ yearly competition. (They like me! They really like me!)

Before that, BECOME had been rejected, in the full for the 103rd time. Wait, the full wasn’t rejected 103 times. I think it was only rejected, um, about 32 times. Oh yeah. It was read, in the full, by 28 agents.

Before that, one agent read it three times. She never actually requested any of the revisions, she just kept rejecting me, I kept fixing it up and she kept agreeing to read it again. She liked my writing, what can I say? But, obviously, she just couldn’t fall in love with my story.

Before that, an agent offered to represent BECOME! Yeah! We had an awesome talk where she told me some (but not all) of the changes she would like to see. She said she’d send me the notes, and as long as I agreed to them, she’d sign me. Hurray!

Except, the notes never came.

I emailed her and asked if she’d changed her mind about me. She assured me she still wanted me and my story. Work on something else in the meantime, she said. But four months later I had to face facts: The agent wasn’t playing fair and she had no intention of signing me. So I got back to work. Revised according to the things we talked about (because they really were great ideas) and started querying again.

Before that, I had a contract with a small publisher. BECOME was set to be released in July of 2010. But alas, that publisher went out of business.

Before that, I worked like any aspiring author to perfect my story. I wrote, revised, wrote and revised some more. I entered (and won) several competitions. My story was strong. But it would not be published any time soon.

Okay, fast forward to today. Yesterday I released my book. I spit and polished it. Had it professionally edited. Hired a professional artist for the cover image. Did my darndest to give it the best birthday I could manage.

And now it’s up to you to determine if all those agents were right to reject BECOME, or if I was right to publish it because, damnit, they were wrong.


Bio: Ali Cross is the sensei of the Writer's Dojo where she holds a black belt in awesome. She lives in Utah with her kickin' husband, two sparring sons, one ninja cat, two sumo dogs and four zen turtles.
ali's blog: http://www.alicross.com 
ali's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authoralicross
ali's Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ali_cross 

Sixteen-year old Desolation Black wants nothing more than to stay in Hell where it’s cold and lonely and totally predictable. Instead, she’s sent back to Earth where she Becomes the evil she despises and the good she always feared.

  

When Desi is forced to embrace her inner demon, she assumes her Choice has been made—that she has no hope of being anything other than what her father, Lucifer, has created her to be. What she doesn’t count on, is a reason to want to change—something she’s never had before—a friend.

Ali is giving away an awesome SIGNED copy of BECOME, along with swanky swag!  Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter.  Ends Nov. 20