My Debut Novel ‘The Time Company’ Is Now Available!

This is the post I’ve been dreaming of sharing! My first novel is real and ready! I know I’ve been sitting on the details, but finally I can tell it all!

As I mentioned in this post, I took a bookmaking class in my final semester of university. This course was the program’s big thing, and you had to be interviewed to get in (though as long as you had material and a good GPA, you were approved). Most of my class wrote nonfiction and/or compiled nonfiction stories from previous classes, but as I said, I knew I didn’t want to do that. I had my old half-baked fiction novel, and I was determined to use that. So I began the process of opening the file, reading the awful, cringy garbage I wrote in high school, fixing it up, and adding another 20k words to end the story. Then I edited it several times, and then I sent it to be read by a few friends who volunteered to help me out (and I am very grateful for them).

By then the bookmaking class had started, and the prof had us get to work on learning how to typeset and design covers and understand the parts of a book. Now, the prof does own/manage a publishing company, so we originally thought that our books were getting traditionally published through that, but it turned out that Life Rattle Press is a “collective group of new writers” rather than a typical publishing company, so we actually published and printed our books with Createspace, which, for anyone unaware, is an Amazon affiliate site and a common tool for self-publishers. I knew nothing of the site going in, so I had to do a bunch of research on it, but I liked that because it was my book done my way, and I wanted to learn all I could. In the end, after my story got edited another few times and I designed a cover and typeset it all, I was ready to approve it for sale.

My novel is called The Time Company. My back of the book blurb reads:

There’s a secret company that produces and controls Time. When Cory’s missing father returns home after nine years, things aren’t what they seem. Before he knows it, Cory and his best friend are off to the Time Company to seek help and uncover a shocking scandal within.

It’s just over 60 thousand words and I describe it as an adventure novel with light fantasy elements (spoiler: the light fantasy element is dragons because I love dragons so of course I had to). I didn’t really have a target audience in mind when I wrote it, but my friends who read it believe it to be good for middle school readers, and I’m okay with this because it’s a book I think I would have enjoyed when I was growing up. If this book can make a mark on a kid the same way a few specific books did on me, then I can die happy. This is the only original story I’ve ever had that’s worth telling, so the fact that it’s finally seeing the light of day is outstanding for me.

I also tried to have my story not be super cliche in the sense that I really thought a lot about common tropes and how I presented characters. I really hope that comes across. I may not be the best writer ever, but at least I’m not serving you all the same old stuff again, ya know? The Time Company isn’t flawless, but it was created with love and passion.

So I’m an official author! I’m a writer! I was pretty pleased when my 16 page free iBook on Quidditch was published, but this is way more official! Being able to hold my own book, that I designed, in my hands and knowing that I wrote every word is indescribable. It’s a feeling only authors can relate to, and I’m so glad I can feel it.

So I’ve definitely convinced you to buy a copy, right? Right. Here’s how you can get one. The book is available on Amazon here in hard copy and here as an eBook for Kindles and other e-readers. It’s also available as an iBook on iTunes. Maybe you’re not into this genre, and that’s fine, but maybe you know someone who is? Tell your friends!

And what’s next for me? Aside from marketing my book on social media and building a bit of an author reputation for myself (how does one go about that???) I’m going to try and look into getting The Time Company traditionally published. In class, we did lightly touch on how to reach out to agents, so I want to see how that goes. I also have loose plans to make this into a trilogy. I have not started that yet, and honestly, I don’t know when I will, but it is an eventual goal of mine. I love my characters and I know there’s more to the world I’ve created, so I want to explore that one day. But I have just spent over a year working almost non-stop on this book, so we’re going to take a breather and enjoy this achievement for now!

Anyway, I’m so pleased to be able to share this after working on it for so long. I hope you buy a copy and I hope you enjoy it. I also plan to do a giveaway on Twitter soon, so keep an eye out for that. If you do buy it, feel free to write reviews or ratings or comments or something and send them my way! And for any real-life friends/family reading this, you can get a copy directly from me if you want.

That’s all for now!

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