How Books Took Over My Life

I’m a book person.

It started way back, nearly twenty years ago. My parents read me Are You My Mother? so many times that I could recite the story word-for-word before I could even read the words for myself. From there on out, books and stories became an essential element of my life.

• I was best friends with Nancy Drew.
• I learned about the horse racing industry when I read the Thoroughbred series. 
• The fantastical world of Alagaesia became like a real place to me. (Probably because I read Eragon at least four times.)

Books are my thing. My passion. What I always come back to, no matter what distractions might get in the way, like say studying for a mid-term or writing a research paper. 

For example, next week Caraval by Stephanie Garber is being released, and I have been waiting to read it for months. I will definitely be ignoring the rest of my responsibilities until I'm able finish reading it.

What does this mean for my career? Well, I'm not exactly sure about that yet. The big, major, very-work-intensive dream is to get my own novel published, but it's been difficult balancing my writing and university work. 

What I have started recently though, is promoting other authors and their work. On Instagram I have a #bookstagram account, where I talk about what I've been reading and interact with other book bloggers, readers, and publishers. It might be a few years until I'm finally ready to introduce my novels to the world, but in the mean time I like to help out self-published authors by writing book reviews and featuring them on my Instagram feed. 

The publishing world can be brutal, and I'd like to do what I can to help new authors find an audience for their stories. For this class, my responses will likely focus on the publishing industry, promotion for self-published authors, and book promotion in general. 

For those who might be interested my #bookstagram account can be found here.