Letting Go

My guest today is author Sharon Hamilton, who writes paranormal romance and contemporary SEAL romance in Northern California. 

Is this Indie craze for you? Are you too late?

There are so many wonderful opportunities today for authors, especially with the rise of the Indie publishing wave. At the recent RWA Convention in NYC, I heard it said that this phenomenon is broadening the window a bit, giving readers more variety, and therefore expanding the numbers of authors who can participate. Indie has not only changed the lives of authors, but it has changed strategy for literary agents, and for publishers as well. The reader is now getting a plethora of new authors to explore, getting these books faster and cheaper. Will more books be sold? Are readers reading more than before? I don’t know the answer to those questions.

As with any changing market trend, there are pros and cons. Just when we think we’ve learned how it all works, everything changes again. Authors who never made much money on their books that languished out of print can resurrect them, dust them off, edit and re-launched in eBook format, where they can keep the lion’s share of the profits. This new life has brought instant riches for not only NYC best-selling authors, but mid-list authors as well. Author’s backlists are paying some serious bills, and allowing some to look forward to an actual retirement. Every week we are flooded with names of people making mega six figure incomes. It all looks so easy.

What's in a SEAL?

Today my guest is Sharon Hamilton, who writes paranormal and contemporary sensual romance. She is currently working on a three-novel series involving Navy SEALS. Her debut novel, Angel, is launching in May. She also writes erotic shorts under the pen name Angela Love. And while Sharon is taking over Terry's Place, I'm over at The Blood Red Pencil talking more about using Track Changes from the author's viewpoint. Welcome, Sharon.

My son is a Navy SEAL. His graduating class started with 192 trainees, and by the time the class was through, 7 of the original men were left. My son was the youngest in the group.

You can imagine what goes through your mind when your child tells you he has elected to put himself in harm’s way. One of the first things I told him was that he was a better person than I was. But I didn’t realize what kind of a course they would be going through, and what kind of commitment it took to finish.

In the original class, there was a Senator’s son, an astronaut’s son, captains of several Annapolis and West Point sports teams, and several pro football players. There was a young man who gave up his chance to compete in the Olympics to try out. Most of these didn’t make it. No shame in that. The training teaches a young man what his limits are. The ones that remain would jump off a twelve-story building if they were told. Just like the young SEAL did in Iraq when he fell on a grenade and saved four other team guy’s lives, at the expense of his own. And he’d already been wounded earlier in the day.