Guest post by Samuel Mahaney
As my 35-year Air Force career came to an end, I began to think of college days when I wrote poetry and prose during my spare time. My plan then was to continue writing throughout my adult life. Well, life as a husband, father, Air Force pilot, Georgetown Capitol Hill Fellow, Harvard National Security Fellow, lawyer, and Two-Star General didn’t agree with my aspirations to write during my spare time, because, well, I didn’t have any spare time.
As the light at the end of the tunnel—retirement—approached, I decided I would write full time as a second, post-Air Force, career. When I told friends and family, some of them gave me the look. You know, the one that sarcastically conveys, "Yah, sure you are, sport."
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High school writing classes teach us many lessons. We develop foundational skills that we apply for the rest of our lives—and sometimes that's not such a great thing. Fiction writers, particularly, spend time un-learning lessons from high school. Here are a few tendencies you may have picked up while learning how to write the perfect college admission essay. Publishing your first book is exciting! But it also puts you in a precarious position. If this is your first time self-publishing, you may be vulnerable to scammers and predatory companies. One of the reasons I expanded Blue Pen to offer self-pub services (cover design, interior layout, etc.) is because of these companies I saw taking advantage of first-time authors. There is a legitimate need for companies that offer editing, book design, and marketing services. It's much easier for indie authors to get all of these services from one place and to have a dedicated project manager. But that need created an opening for money-making schemes—self-pub companies that don't actually care about authors, readers, or the writing community. What Does a Self-Pub Services Company Do?
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