My Adventure to Becoming a Published Author
Sunday, January 5, 2025
Day One: The Beginning of the Blog
Today marks the official launch of my blog—an exciting milestone on my journey as an aspiring author! While this isn’t my first day writing a children’s book, it is the first time I’m documenting my creative process.
Before now, I completed an incredible Udemy course titled “Write, Illustrate, and Publish a Children’s Book with AI” by Samson Vowles. Samson is not only an outstanding teacher but also my all-time favorite Udemy instructor. Thanks to his guidance, I wrote and self-published an e-book called Pioneer Children of Ashley Valley.
My dream was to see my book in print, so I ordered a proof copy. That’s when I hit my first hiccup—an unexpected formatting issue. I hadn’t realized that the inside cover page doesn’t count as an actual page. This oversight caused the text and illustrations to be misaligned. Instead of text appearing on the left and its matching image on the right, they ended up mismatched, which threw off the reading experience.
Here’s how it should have looked:
And here’s what happened:
But the formatting wasn’t the only challenge. I discovered another issue with the book’s cover. The images I’d generated using AI worked beautifully for the digital version, but when enlarged for print, the children’s faces became distorted. Fixing this means creating entirely new artwork and redoing the cover design.
Despite these setbacks, I’m determined to make the printed version a reality.
Tomorrow, I return to online school after a two-week Christmas break, which means my unlimited time for book revisions will be over. But this blog will serve as my creative diary, where I’ll share the ups, downs, and lessons learned as I work on Pioneer Children of Ashley Valley: Version Two.
Stay tuned—there’s so much more to come on this publishing adventure!