Taking Risks as a First-Time Author (AKA Compounding the Difficult)

There are certain things in life that people dream about, knowing that the road to achieving their goal is a long and twisty one, without realizing exactly how near-impossible that dream actually is. How many of us wanted to be an astronaut, a professional athlete, a movie star, or maybe even…an author while growing up? And we knew, deep down, that this was probably not in the cards, but it’s not until you start down that path that you see just how much the gods of fate and destiny conspire against us.

Yes, I wanted to be an astronaut. I even thought I had the right stuff and had things tentatively planned out. Take the ASVAB, graduate high school, join the Air Force and then go to space. Yeah, there were probably some other steps there, but I was pretty sure I could do this. I never got sick on any of the rides at Disneyland when I went in the 3rd grade or at the local county fairs, so I figured this was a done deal.

Turns out cockpits aren’t built for giants and if I wanted to be an astronaut by way of fighter pilot, I would need to be a little shorter. So THAT dream was a bust. I still took the ASVAB and aced it. They said I could choose my career in the Air Force and I could be anything I wanted to be…except a pilot. I still remember the recruiter trying to console me. “With those numbers, you could be a mechanic on F-16s and that’s a really great career.” He wasn’t wrong, but all I could hear was, “Blah, blah, blah, your dream is dead.”

It also turns out that for some strange reason, a lot of sports require something called hand-eye coordination, which I don’t exactly excel at. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but not always in a straight line. So that classic childhood dream was out, too.

Being a serious nerd, however, I always knew that I could be a writer. I loved telling stories and I was a die-hard bookworm, so this was surely a dream that was attainable. I mean, who’s ever heard of an author who was too tall to write? And being physically uncoordinated is practically a badge of honor in the nerd-o-sphere.

Unfortunately, those same fickle gods showed up to pooh-pooh my dreams, and after many years of trying to get published, which included taking classes, going to writing seminars, reading the how-I-do-this books by some of my favorite authors, I got frustrated with the difficulties involved in getting the big publishing houses to notice me. There’s this awful Catch-22 in that you need to have a good agent to get Del Rey, Tor, Roc, or Ace to look in your general direction, and you can’t get a good agent without a good editor, and you can’t get a good editor to even return your inquiries unless you’re with one of the big publishing houses.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good editors out there. And they’re in high demand–why wouldn’t they be? But they don’t have time to read the first serious attempt of even a small percentage of the unknown, unpublished writers out there trying to make it big. Or even make it medium. Most of us would settle for medium. 

Then the stars finally started aligning with two separate amazing things that happened. The first is that the indie scene became a viable alternative to publishing with the Big Houses. It took me a while to notice, but when 3 of the last 5 new fantasy series that I had read were originally (or, in one case, continued to be) self-published authors, my “what if” senses started to tingle. I started looking into the independent possibilities and realized that this was something I could do. I would prove my chops as a writer and then the big publishing houses would come knocking on my door to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Almost instantly, however, a really ugly problem reared its head. I love to write…but I hate to do all the things that need to happen for a writer to be an author. I mean, seriously, I’m not a fan. Researching book formatters, vetting a company that works with indies to get published, getting an illustrator, a good editor, and all the myriad minutiae necessary to put a novel into the hands of my adoring public? Forget it! I feel like I have some sort of mental block. Just thinking about it puts me into a brain fog faster than a post-Thanksgiving dinner in a too-warm house on a comfy couch.

Can’t I just lock myself in my den, turn on the Pandora, and have my wonderful stories, you know, just kind of appear in people’s hands? It didn’t seem too far-fetched, after all. I do write fantasy, right?

And that’s when the second amazing thing happened. This spectacular person came into my life, fell in love with me, and believed in my dream. Well, maybe not the part about the novels appearing in people’s hands, but all the rest of it. She knows how to research, she’s smart, and she’s absolutely tenacious in ferreting things out. She plays an Alchemist/Rogue character in Pathfinder and began utilizing her maxed-out Perception and Disable Device skills in real life to see through all the traps and scams and “give us money, and we’ll promise you the world” fly-by-night companies out there who are taking advantage of the uninitiated in the independent publishing world. 

With her help, we got some doors to open and some possibilities to become realities. And it gave me the opportunity to write a really great novel with the help of a lot of different people. 

It was at this point that the problems began to appear, however. The problems with our vision for the novel and our faith in readers. You see, there’s a certain mentality that goes along with some of the persons who work in the indie business. I don’t know if this mindset is also prevalent with the Publishing Companies and the Big Editors who work with proven talent, because I don’t breathe that rarefied air. What we quickly found out though, is that editors are Very Certain that the public likes a particular kind of cover, can’t get behind a three-protagonist storyline when the heroes don’t unite at the end, hates the idea of epistolary chapters taking up a third of the book, and /believes/ [that] /creating/ (a) [language that] /looks/ like [this] /is/ [nothing] less than [literary suicide].

Then there were the covers. I had a very specific vision for what I wanted to see, and my heartmate found places where companies created “safe places” for artists to meet with novelists so the writers could commission covers for their books that looked super cool. Apparently, artists were tired of writers wasting their time with “I promise to pay you if you make my cover–JK!” And writers were tired of artists promising artwork that was paid for but never showed up on time.

All of these sites were heavily regulated, which seemed…safe, if a little cumbersome. But whenever I proposed my idea for a very specific scene and look, I was met with the unambiguous response, “that’s not what the market actually wants right now.” 

Um, what? Am I not offering to pay you monies to make a cool picture for me? Is the customer not always right? And when the third different illustrator told us what the “market” wanted right now, my heartmate and I went down to our local brick-and-mortar building and browsed through the fantasy section to see if these illustrators were pulling our chain. There were some covers that were interesting, but most of them looked like they were trying so hard to NOT be something that might turn someone away that they became generic and vague to the point that we didn’t know how a consumer could have a clue as to what the book was actually about.

That’s not what we wanted. We wanted a picture of a bad-ass warrior, front and center in the snow of Baria with an implied ice demon getting ready to make some trouble. We felt the mark of Tirnashc on Imar’s face separates this book apart from the other stuff out there and makes a strong statement. Not some vague symbol with a lot of fru-fru coming down the sides in an artsy pattern vaguely alluding to Celtic knotwork with a loud primary color as the background. 

Then it came down to finding someone who could agree with the author (that’s me) about the True Language. I wrote an entire blog about why I feel it’s important: "The True Language of Baria–How (and Why) It Happened." So this meant my go-to question when I met with any potential editor inevitably became some iteration of, “Explain why this might be necessary.”

And if they couldn’t get that this was non-negotiable from that hint, I was unilaterally told that “it would confuse readers” and that this isn’t something that I wanted to do as a first-time author. I do agree with the second part of that sentence, but if you think fantasy readers are easily confused, I don’t want you to edit my book.

Anyone reading this blog knows what I’m talking about. If we can figure out that magic can have rules and limits just like things of the physical universe of Earth and that those rules and limits are different from Weeks’ drafting of color, Sullivan’s Art and plucking of chords, and Sanderson’s “breath”, “allomancy”, and “soul stamps”, then I think we can handle some non-traditional punctuation. To imply that we can’t is, frankly, insulting to me and my readers.

And I get to hear from my readers! Sometimes they Dispatch a Missive from the website, sometimes they leave a review on Amazon, Readers’ Favorites, or Indies Today, and sometimes it’s an email directly to us over here. Of all the questions I get, none of them fall into the category of “I didn’t understand the True Language” or “I don’t understand how letters work.” They want to talk philosophy, theology, or When Does the Next Book Come Out? 

And it’ll be 2027. Sorry, I still have a full-time job.

In the end, I put together the best novel I could and it seems that a lot of people are enjoying it for a lot of different reasons, despite my “risky” behavior. From the gauche cover, to the incomprehensible language of the Barians, to the non-traditional writing style–to say nothing of the potty mouth on Damone Kavamar–this dangerous venture of mine is really resonating with people. 

In closing, let me say to all of my readers out there, thank you for putting yourself in harm’s way and taking a chance on an unknown author. I promise to keep rolling the dice as long as you’re still happy to visit Auren in all of its dangerous glory.

All artwork by Forge. Copyright Leonard J. Chastain 2026