My first published book was a science fiction novel titled, ‘Survivor’. If you go looking for it, though, you won’t find it anywhere. After self-publishing it in 2018, I unpublished it in 2021.
Writing Survivor
Survivor was the first novel I was able to actually finish. It was written over a period of five years, during a nightly stint from 10:00 to 11:30 pm. I wasn’t a night owl; it was just the only chunk of time I had available.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about the three-act structure, or the Snowflake method, or any of the other fiction models for constructing a story. I don’t think my fellow writers did either. But they didn’t need to. They all seemed to have a zillion stories banging around in their heads, begging to be written. Not me. I could bring a scene to life with the best of them, but fashioning a story arc or character arc, not so much. It was why Survivor took so long to write. Often I didn’t know what was going to happen from one sentence to the next. But I’d given myself permission to wing it, so instead of giving up after a few chapters – my usual M.O. – I just kept going. My goal was to finish it, somehow.
Writing Survivor taught me to be a pantser — someone who writes from the seat of their pants.
Publishing Survivor
Publishing Survivor was as much a leap of faith as writing it. It finished the process. I had written the book. Now I had to make it available to readers.
My family and friends were the best. They bought it, read it, and a few even reviewed it. One of them told me in all sincerity that she thought it was brilliant. And then, like all self-published novels by writers who know nothing about self-promotion, Survivor’s sales petered out. Survivor didn’t (ahem) survive.
Survivor Crisis
While I was working on the sequel – which was going equally slowly – a workshop instructor suggested that, at 120,000 words, Survivor was too long for a first novel in the science fiction genre. I should divide it in two, she said, and re-publish it as two shorter novels.
My reaction: no way!! After all that work? Start over? Only a lunatic would consider it.
Apparently I’m a lunatic. As weeks went by, I began to see merit in the suggestion. The story contained a major character and sub-plot that went nowhere. I could scavenge part of Survivor and combine it with a bunch of back-story to create a prequel. The rest of Survivor could be tweaked into a second book. Unpublishing Survivor meant losing all its reviews (seven of them!), but it wasn’t as if I’d be disappointing hordes of fans.
Unpublishing and Replacing Survivor
And so I took the plunge. In 2021, Survivor came down, and Immunity Cage went up as Book 1 of the Modified Humans series. Immunity Bond followed, completing the story that had been Survivor. A third book, Immunity Flight, has since had its debut. A fourth and fifth book are in the planning stages. Recently I released a spin-off about a minor character in the Modified Humans books; it’s a collection of three novelettes titled Stepping Through.
Do I regret unpublishing Survivor? Would I do it again? Here’s the long answer.
I believe in lifelong learning. In re-writing Survivor, I learned a lot.
I learned to distill every story down to its essence. Immunity Cage, for example, is about freeing oneself from ingrained beliefs that are self-destructive. Before I begin writing, I have to identify the essence of my story, and filter everything that happens in the story through that lens.
I began the ongoing process of mastering story structure, and I learned to be a plantser. I plan the skeleton of the story before I start writing, and allow myself the spontaneous creativity of a pantser to fill in the details.
Learning the craft has made me more confident in my writing. I recognize that I still have a lot to learn, so I’m always open to new ideas. But I evaluate them much more critically before I decide whether to apply them.
I’m pleased with how Immunity Cage and Immunity Bond turned out. I like the titles better, and I like having been able to tell my hero’s back story.
In writing as in every aspect of life, I’ve decided it’s important to do your best, then move on and have no regrets.
So I have no regrets.