So, I took a bit of a detour in my writing. I had a title pop into my head, “Life 2.0.” As soon as the title started rattling around in my brain, I knew it would be a self-help book. Now, I’m not a self-help guru. My chosen genres are fantasy and science fiction. I’m not a life coach or career coach; I don’t have the alphabet marching along behind my name proclaiming all my degrees. But, I figured, why not give it a shot? I knew the things I had done to figure out my own path, so maybe those things could help someone else as well. Plus, I had to write this book. The idea wouldn’t even let me focus on my fantasy or sci-fi projects (3 of which I was currently working on) until it was finished. I was driven.
Let me explain what I mean by “driven.” One of my downfalls is that I’m a relatively slow writer. It took me four years to complete my first book, From a Far Land, the first book in the Jaben’s Rift trilogy. That was initially about 125,000 words (now it’s 109,000). So, the math makes that a little over 30,000 words per year. I’ve gotten faster since then, but let me still apologize to those readers who had to wait so long for books 2 and 3.
Life 2.0 is a little over 30,000 words. It’s not nearly as long as a lot of other self-help books out there, partly because I didn’t want to add a lot of filler just to make it longer. I didn’t put in pages and pages of anecdotes about how other people made changes to their lives. I wanted to focus on the person reading the book instead of a bunch of other people. Anyway… From start to finish, writing, editing, beta reading, proofreading, formatting, cover design and publishing, it was just under six weeks. Six. Weeks. I almost literally could think of nothing else while I was working on it. I couldn’t even focus on my other projects. I’m hoping this is some sort of divine sign that someone out there will be helped by what I wrote, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see on that front.
And now it’s done and ready for market. I’ll get back to work on Redemption’s Edge, Sentence: Terra, and a trilogy based on a character named J.D. Williams. Redemption’s Edge is about an enchanted sword gone bad. Sentence: Terra is about immortal aliens exiled to Earth. And the J.D. Williams trilogy is a modern-day fantasy heavily influenced by Celtic mythology.
But for now, Life 2.0 is out there, ready to help folks make upgrades to their lives. It asks three questions which are a part of every journey: What? How? Why?
What do you want? How are you going to get it? Why do you want it? It has a few simple exercises in it to help you answer those questions in various ways. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you like it, and I truly hope you find it helpful on your journey. Be sure to let me know what you think!
Now, back to my imaginary worlds.
Official page of fantasy author, G. David Walker 