In August, my debut novel, Ralph Ridley in the Hunt for Time, was released to the world. In the months leading up to this, I didn’t really know what to expect.
For one, they flew. Secondly, I didn’t always know what to do. Thirdly, and perhaps most of all, I experienced a whole lot of “am I doing this right?”
The weeks following have been the same.
In hindsight though, I suppose no one (including yourself) can ever prepare you for an event like this. Too many nuances and personal experiences are intertwined, making it very much burdened by the weight of individualism.
Expectations exist. Fears exist. Excitement climbs, peaks, dives, weaves, loops. Over and over.
To an outside observer, publishing a book may not seem like a big deal. In fact, most (80%+) people around me have either said nothing or said things like, “Oh, you wrote a book?” (with inflection on the final word).
And that’s okay. But to authors, especially we Debut Authors, publishing a book is often a consequence (outcome, aftermath) of an unspecified, unverifiable amount of time and energy. In other words, a big chunk of our lives, similar to how one might grind away at completing a PhD or securing a career path or job title.
As for the actual book launch day itself, in the “industry,” it’s often compared to a wedding, where so much goes into the preparation, the emotional build-up, the everyone showing up for you, the conversations, the speeches, the worry about what one should wear…
Like a wedding, it’s a day all about you. It’s also a day marking something significant.
The comedown following this “wedding day” is also a ride. Like the return home with the elixir, as Joseph Campbell would say, integration is priority, albeit laced with a disjointed, dichotomous sensation.
For me, the “Elixir” I collected before returning to “The Ordinary World” came after a 12-year journey.
My Journey
For anyone who has followed my blog since the beginning (I assume this is possible, despite the flakiness of my writing here in the more recent years), you would perhaps possess an insight (inkling) into what it took for me to arrive here.
My journey to getting published was a long, convoluted road filled with detours, fog, speed limits, potholes, tolls, and bad drivers (especially those who drive 20 under, then 20 over when the overtaking lane begins).
I didn’t always have the goal of getting published. This is especially true when I first started writing. For many years, I revelled in writing blog posts and producing video essays. But as the years passed, the evolution of my writing unlocked possibilities in my mind, resulting in me beginning work on larger projects, like self-publishing eBooks and writing non-fiction books I planned to one day get published.
From Small Beginnings
In the early 2010s, when social media was in its infancy, Facebook business pages (somewhat new-ish still) were powerhouses for promoting and building reputation. As I dwelt in the health and fitness realm, I had one, which often meant I dedicated time each week (sometimes each day) to researching and crafting captions for scheduled posts.
It might sound weird, but back then, lengthy captions were the norm. In fact, when people weren’t so scroll-frenzy, they were favoured, and people often enjoyed engaging in helpful/interesting content.
This was great for me as I liked reading and writing about topics I found interesting (and wanted to learn more about). What made it easier too was keeping a list in my Notes app for future posts whenever ideas came to me (conversations with clients, reading/watching something, etc.).
As time went by, these lists grew and grew.
When 2012 rolled around, the game changed on social media when Facebook bought Instagram. Lengthy captions were downgraded, replaced by shorter content with beautiful images and videos (and people). But one location online still existed where people went for real information: Blogs.
With my Notes app filled with information and ideas, my caption writing yearned to be set free. Since I already frequented many blogs, it didn’t take long before the thought of having my own .com fell into my awareness.
A Book and a Blog
By 2013, I not only wrote content for my social media accounts, but also started work on articles, transferring the longer captions I’d saved in Notes to Word docs.
Before posting any though, I needed an audience (email list). At least that’s what the marketing “gurus” told me. This led me to a new path I hadn’t considered before: Writing a free eBook.
Midway through that year, I began work on Game Changers: 10 Habits That Could Change Your Life. I planned to fill this eBook with valuable, helpful information about topics my clients would struggle with or ask questions about, like fats (mono, poly, sat, trans), daily exercise, and sleep.
Alongside work, I chipped away at this book, researching, writing, editing, formatting, getting a cover designed, and everything else that goes into creating an eBook, like learning how to get it onto KDP. I also dedicated time to learning how to build a website, code HTML/CSS, ensure I knew the best way to launch a website (and eBook) and properly advertise my articles, how to collect emails (Aweber), how to perform email marketing post-email collection, how to…
Well, you get the picture.
By 2014, I was set to release Game Changers with the final edits nearing completion. I chose February as my release month, and once I’d prepared everything, I launched it to my “followers” and friends.
To my surprise, over the next 2-3 months, more than 200 people downloaded it (maybe more, it’s hard to say when it was a free PDF and its URL could be copied and pasted to anyone). As I collected emails with each download, I also gained an audience for future blog posts.
From there, I published an article per week for a long time after that. And when I started university in March, more coal was added to this furnace (my Notes app), while also exposing me to different topics, ideas, and, of course, the ability to request help from my professors to better understand concepts and improve my writing.
I published so much content over the next few years, I lost a lot of people from my email list. In fact, people who unsubscribed often wrote me things like, “I gave you my email for the book. I don’t care about all these articles!” Others just said things like, “Way too many emails!!”
Post-Game Changers
With my eBook out and articles being written, I’d merged well and truly into the health and fitness lane. I would write in my spare time and do all the annoying stuff writers don’t typically enjoy: self-promotion, SEO, the perfect cover photo to advertise, brainstorming eye-catching headlines, finding the perfect images/gifs to splice between paragraphs.
In the years following, I wrote topics ranging from fasting to strength training to proprioception and injuries. Little by little, however, my writing bucked the health and fitness cage. And this became apparent (and more realised today) with hints of fiction appearing elsewhere in my Notes app, from writing random chapters to taking extensive notes and ideas down for future books that would be fusions of health, life, and science. It also evolved into me writing articles like The Apokélypse: Pokémon, Addiction, Dopamine and Life, Did Luke Really Have to Blow Up the Death Star? and Enter the Void: A Trip Through Death, while keeping it on topic with my blog’s theme (Integration Information).
Over the course of the decade since launching my blog, I have published over 200 articles, with many being featured on Best Article of the Week lists. Some have even appeared on paid websites too.
Throughout all of this, and stretching back to when I first typed Chapter 1 of Game Changers (which started with a story of a demonic succubus), I have written with the duality of fusing life and science with philosophy and narrative. I would write about The Matrix, while talking about how humans are hurting Earth. I would write about another lap of the Sun, while talking about five things you could implement in the following year.
Of course, a lot of people write like this. And, of course, a lot of what I wrote can be considered cliché. But it was a different time back then. And just in case you clicked on any of those articles, I agree that many of my articles can provoke The Cringe. But I try to treat my blog as a kind of vault, like a history book showing the change of me and my writing over the years. It also helps remind me of Ray Bradbury’s quote:
Bigger Projects
Alongside my captions and articles (and uni essays), I also worked on bigger projects. Some never saw (and probably will never see) the light of day, like a huge 200+ research-based book titled The Performance Manual, with topics like phantom limb pain and anatomy, along with accompanying videos, like this one I posted pre-emptively that has gone on to hit almost 700k views (I’d planned to release a smaller version of The Performance Manual as an eBook if my book was picked up by a publisher – It wasn’t).
I wrote three more free eBooks over the years, including one I had slated for 2022 (with a cover designed and everything), yet never published it. I also rewrote Game Changers. Twice. The first time to re-release it with extra chapters (habits). The second time when a publisher approached me for it.
Throughout all of these years, I dabbled with fiction on and off. I wrote chapters here and there, fleshed out ideas for stories, wrote random paragraphs. But the fiction desire never took hold until about 2018. And by 2019, I began work on two full-length novels.
Once both were complete, I chose the more attractive one (a 100k+ word sci-fi novel set in Darwin) I saw greater potential in and abandoned a lot of my other writing to rewrite and polish it as best I could.
This took me into 2020, when I still wrote articles, ran a YouTube video essay channel, and a podcast (with episodes often written when topics were too intricate for ad lib). But by March of that year…
COVID Struck
With the pausing of the world came the pausing of my life as well. And work.
My blog fell off. My podcast. My YouTube. My social media. I kept carving that 100k+ fiction novel (that also may or may not one day see the light of day). But that became the only writing I did.
On the other side of COVID, with my second novel complete, I began submitting it to publishers, marking the third time I went through the whole process of submission (the first being Game Changers, the second being The Performance Manual).
As publishers get inundated with unsolicited submissions when they open their inboxes, there is usually a disclaimer on the page saying something like, Please allow up to 6 months to get back to you. This often means you send your baby off into the void and hope you’ll hear back one day (you often don’t).
With that Darwin one in the aether though, I started work on my third novel. It’s in this same year (in November to be exact) I’m struck with a new idea while reading books like Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe From Nothing and Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace, and I take the first note down on my phone (now on Evernote): [He] has a sword made out of a form of silk.
Over the next couple of years, I return to writing on my blog, begin work on other projects, write another eBook, rewrite/edit that 100k+ novel some more, begin work on another novel, and hear back from a few publishers for some of my other manuscripts (all rejected).
It’s not until halfway through a novel in January 2022, after wrapping up one POV for the two main characters, the idea that bit me back in November of 2020 calls.
Ralph Ridley is Born
Over the months since first thinking of this novel, I’d written ideas here and there. I’d come up with the protagonist’s name, his history, his family, certain plot points and the grand cast of characters he interacts with. But I didn’t flesh out his story properly until February of 2022.
Side note: In the writing world, you typically have to write with an intended audience and genre in mind, especially when you’re trying to “break in” to the industry. And with this one, I wanted to write a sci-fi book with a quantum mechanics foundation, aimed at the young adult crowd (YA: 13 years and older). I also wanted it to have a “Harry Potter edge,” where people of all ages could read it, ensuring layers, themes, and strings of meaning could be discovered throughout, depending on knowledge (or re-reads).
Once I’d finished planning this book (which really is just another way of saying I had enough ideas to run with – i.e., ideas can be cheap and without enough density, a story can come to an abrupt, early end), I began work on it. This meant all my spare time became dedicated to writing Ralph’s story, including late nights and weekends and even early mornings on holidays.
This wasn’t anything new. Throughout my entire writing career, starting “properly” in 2013, depending on what is happening in my life and what project I’m working on, I write daily (unless something completely prevents me from doing so). Sometimes I write for two hours. Sometimes I write for four to five. Other times, I write for eight, ten, all the way to twelve or fifteen. It all depends on what stage of the project (and what state) I’m in.
Five months later, I completed the first draft of Ralph’s story.
Then came the editing, the rearranging, the rewriting, the commencement of the second and third drafts…
Once (sufficiently) happy with it, I started submitting it to publishers.
And heard nothing back.
Short Stories and a Course
In 2022, I also started writing short stories. I did this for three reasons: 1) with the number of competitions held around the world, so many interesting themes and prompts seemed like a fun catalyst for writing a story, 2) sharpening my prose and ability to craft tight stories, 3) hope to place in a category for exposure or “notoriety” (as publishers often ask in their submission forms “What writing accolades have you received?”).
Over the months (and years since), I short- and longlisted in several competitions, including the 2022 AAWP/UWRF Emerging Writers’ Prize. One of which, titled The Divided Village, a story about two kids living through the collapse of their village (the theme for this competition was “water under the bridge”), longlisted with an Australian publisher known as Hawkeye Publishing.
My first taste of being published came when they reached out and asked me to look over the pageset version of my story (they publish their yearly competition in an anthology paperback with everyone who places).
After this, I continued reworking Ralph’s story, submitting it to publishers (when certain ones opened their portals), and writing short stories.
Near the end of 2022, I attended the Berry Writers’ Festival, buying a ticket to a workshop titled, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Publishing But Were Afraid To Ask, hosted by Mary Cunanne. At the end of the day, it was the classic group setting situation, where each of us (30+ people) had to pitch our current work to the room as though they were publishers.
When it came to me, nervous, out of my depth, I spoke without too much thought.
But the room seemed to love it. They even loved the title. In fact, I had to answer several questions from attendees, which added to the interest about my story.
While my manuscript wasn’t the only one in the room to receive praise from the workshop host and my fellow participants, it was my first insight into a large group of people being interested in what I was writing.
It felt odd. But cool.
Armed with this, refreshed, I started submitting Ralph’s story again.
And received silence.
A New Direction
Sometime in early-2023, an epiphany struck when I remembered how Mary (festival course host) offered manuscript reviews. I thought it was a great option, as I was otherwise just writing into a void and short-/longlisting occasionally in competitions generally offering no feedback.
I reached out to her. She responded by saying she didn’t typically review sci-fi/fantasy, but provided me with some other people to reach out to. During this period, however, I recalled that Hawkeye (the publisher I’d longlisted with in 2022) also offered manuscript reviews. After visiting their website, filling out the form, I booked a zoom with the director, and submitted my manuscript for The Hunt for Time.
From there, I played the waiting game.
One random day in June of 2023, the director wrote to me and told me she was beginning to read my manuscript. That was cool (and nerve wracking). What was even cooler, was the follow-up email:
Remind me please, have you submitted this manuscript to publishers? I’m finding that technically your writing skill level is exceptional – there’s very little in your manuscript that needs editing – only minor occasional proofreading in fact … I’ll be looking at the more advanced techniques in your report such as ways to build your reader’s connection and investment in the story.
I didn’t know what to think about this. But it did give me a nice dose of positivity for the rest of the day.
A week later, I received the structural report. It had areas I could improve in, a recommendation of switching the POV from first- to third-person, some characterisation issues (for those who have read the book, one of the main characters in Part 2 didn’t exist in that draft), etc. And, at the end of the report, eight words that led me to (ultimately) writing this very article: I am confident in offering you a contract.
The Reward: The Contract
July of 2023 saw me signing a contract with Hawkeye Publishing. If I track the rough timeline from when I first started writing articles/eBooks, I could say it was an almost 10-year journey. Maybe to the month exactly. If I track it from when I started writing captions, maybe it’s a 12-year journey.
Regardless, it’s a long time. It’s also a long road of zero clarity and direction (for the most part), along with many unexpected ups, downs, and curveballs.
The Road to Publication
The journey “Home” to “The Ordinary World” (getting The Hunt for Time ready for the shelves) also came with plenty of new paths, doors, roads, and uncertainties. The rewrite wasn’t as difficult as any other rewrite. Maybe. But the motivation had changed.
From there, and after revising some of the science concepts (which changed again later), I did what all writers do: read and edit and re-read and re-edit and rewrite and read and edit and read and re-read and rewrite and mess around with the same words I’d been reading and editing and rewriting and messing around with for months.
But like carving a marble sculpture, that’s all part of the process. And when comparing Version 1 of The Hunt for Time to the final version, it is a completely different experience because of this
You Only Get One Shot
For established authors, the process to publication can be a lot different to debut authors. For debut authors, our first publication could be our only shot. Quite often as well, we (debut authors) have written for many, many years prior to this one shot, which often means there’s a lot at stake. As a result, we put a lot of emphasis on “making it right” and not screwing up this one opportunity (that we’ve been striving for).
After all, it’s not every day you get signed. It’s not every day your book goes to print. It’s not every day you get to have a debut novel.
Maybe there are writers out there who only want to release one book. But (I assume) most authors go through this process because they would like to a) continue writing or b) use publication as a way to transition to other creative endeavours.
True, this worry and pressure we put upon ourselves might be egotistical. Perhaps it’s just a component of seeking external validation. But I would challenge anyone to not care about the outcome to something they’ve worked on and towards for over a decade. I don’t think too many would be okay to say, “Hey, I made this thing,” and only receive crickets.
When it came time for me to say “Hey, I made this thing” (notify the world about my book), it came with a good dose of anxiety.
Posting My First Trailer
To begin promotion, I had many options. Everyone goes about this phase differently. Some people are great in front of the camera. Others have the money to rent billboards. For me, I chose the creation of a trailer path. Once I’d completed it, I launched it into the social media stratosphere in May of 2025
Watch the other trailers: Story Trailer and the Release Trailer.
Once this event occurred, it was time for Promo Mode. My spare time went from writing to creating ads and building websites and PR packages and proofreading (especially in the weeks leading up to print) and whatever else that came to mind. This resulted in an enforced writing hiatus for the next three months.
On the other side of that (today is the 9th of September when I’m first writing this article), I’ve returned to writing, aka., “The Ordinary World” (in this particular journey).
The End (and Thank Yous)
With an article this long and about this topic, reviewing it before publishing does make me wonder if it’s too diary-ish. But that’s okay. And if you’ve read this far, thank you. If you scrolled here without reading it, thank you as well.
I’d also like to thank everyone who supported me during this journey, including those who liked, shared, and commented on my posts. Although I thanked the key players in my Acknowledgement section of THFT, I’ll repeat some thank yous here: Hawkeye (Carolyn and her publicity team: Anne, Isabelle, Rikki), Isabella (my cover designer), everyone who supported my work over the years (including downloading Game Changers), you.
I hope this story provides an insight into anyone out there pursuing publication. As you know, many routes to achieve a goal exist. So don’t get disheartened. And I hope (as I also wrote in my Acknowledgements) that “a timeline like this serves as a testament to anyone out there chipping away at a goal, especially the ones people feel will never blossom.”
If you’d like to pre-order a copy of Ralph Ridley in the Hunt for Time, you can head to ralphridley.com. You can also get it at all your favourite bookstores (online and irl).
Thank you for reading.