Vendela Authors

What does it really take to become a published author?

In this special roundtable edition of In The Writer’s Chair, host Lana McAra sits down with three Vendela Publishing authors for a candid conversation about writing, perseverance, publishing, rejection, inspiration, and the importance of finding the right creative community.

Lana is the author and ghostwriter of more than 50 published titles, with over one million copies sold. Joining her are writers from the Jacksonville, Florida area whose paths to publication could not be more different.

🎙️ MEET THE AUTHORS

Chris Koehler
A former university professor specializing in fisheries and aquatic biology, Chris is the author of the suspense thriller Cracked Island, a story rooted in Haitian history and culture.

Harry Martinez
A former Marine scout sniper and retired Army National Guard Sergeant Major, Harry is the author of One Is A Warrior, exploring leadership, service, sacrifice, and the realities faced by citizen soldiers.

Alexandra Harris
Alexandra grew up absorbing life lessons from celebrity magazines in her mother’s hair salon. Her writing focuses on practical tools for discovering your mission, embracing purpose, and finding your own joie de vivre.

🔑 IN THIS EPISODE

• How experiences in Haiti, military deployments, and even lessons from Mother Teresa inspired these authors to write
• Why perseverance may be the most important skill an author can develop
• Lana McAra’s story of enduring 19 rejections over 14 years before finally being published
• Chris Koehler’s funny, and painfully familiar, encounter with the world of literary agents
• Alexandra Harris on the difference between stressful work and fulfilling “chop wood, carry water” effort
• Why writers need mentors, colleagues, editors, and supportive communities
• What led these authors to work with Vendela Publishing
• Encouragement for aspiring authors who are still struggling to get those first words on the page

Whether you’re working on your first manuscript, searching for a publisher, or already navigating the writing life, this conversation is a reminder that becoming an author is rarely a straight line.

🔗 CONNECT

Vendela Publishing:
https://vendelapublishing.com

Chris Koehler:
https://chriscolter.com

Alexandra Harris:
https://alexandraharris.com

👍 If you enjoyed the conversation, please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and share it with a writer who could use a little encouragement.

#Writing #Authors #Publishing #WritingTips #IndieAuthors #BookPublishing #AuthorInterview #WritingCommunity #VendelaPublishing #WritersLife

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_04 0:00

In the Writer's Chair, candid conversations about the writing life with Lana McCara and Vandela Publishing.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to In the Writer's Chair, where we pull up a chair to talk about writing craft, the writing life, and what's possible for writers right now. Today I am delighted to welcome three of our Vandela authors to the podcast. This is our first time doing a round table, even though the table's not round. And I'm excited to hear what all of our authors have to say. We are local in the Jacksonville, Florida area, and that's why we were able to get together today. So let's start off with everyone telling a little bit about who you are and maybe mention the title of your book before we get started. Go ahead, Chris.

SPEAKER_06 0:55

Well, my name is Chris Kohler. I live in Fernadina Beach, Florida. My book is Cracked Island, which actually was published a little over 10 years ago, but it's out of print now. And Vandela Press is going to be doing a second edition. That means it's also going to have some changes made to it. The story is going to be virtually the same, but uh just a little, I think, better written uh in certain areas because we've had more time to make some changes and get suggestions and so forth. So uh my background is I was a university professor at Southern Illinois University. Fisheries and aquatic biology were my specialties. Uh I published a lot of papers in the sciences. I'm still an editor of a journal that is uh published by Oxford University Press. And uh so I'm I'm used to things on that end of it. The novel side of it is is not quite so used to.

SPEAKER_05 1:55

My name is Harry Martinez. I'm a former Marine. I am a retired police officer, and I recently retired from the Army National Guard after 30 years of service with in the infantry as a sergeant major. And I'm here because I wrote that book. One is a warrior, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the day.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And I'm your host, Lana Makira. I'm the author and ghostwriter of 50 published titles with a million copies sold, and I'm the host of In the Writer's Chair, along with a lot of other hats as well. So let's keep this moving. The first question I have, and I'm gonna throw the questions out, and I'm gonna let you volunteer to answer. I don't want to buttonhole anybody, uh, but I love the way discussions happen. What first inspired you to write this particular book? Was it an incident, a person? What was it?

SPEAKER_06 2:56

I could start. Uh uh I did a lot of uh work in my previous profession in Haiti. And Haiti is an incredible country, and I had so many experiences there and met so many people, not just Haitians, but people from all over, and it was just an amazing place. So I got it in my head that I would love to be able to write a novel someday, uh, where I bring all the elements of the sites and the scenery and the people and the religions and all those things together. Uh, and where people would read and they would actually learn. I guess as an educator, I find myself always wanting to educate people, and I thought, what better way to do that than to write a novel, particularly a suspenseful thriller type novel. And so that was my goal. I wanted my in my thoughts the whole time I put the book together.

SPEAKER_05 3:53

I'm working alongside three college kids. Six months prior to being on a bruta, they were in college, focused on their lives, and as citizen soldiers, they answered the call. And I found them to be intellectual, I found them to be arrogant, and I was pleased with that, you have to be. And I found them open-minded, which was refreshing. And 20 years later I thought you don't often hear of the citizen soldier and how he participates today in combat operations or around the world, and what has changed from a force that used to be in reserve to a force now in operations. A lot of people are misinformed or they're simply not understanding that the Army National Guard plays significantly in oversea operations from strategic all the way to the tactical level. And we can go into that later, but basically what that means is we make up 39% of the combat power around the world because we use this on a daily basis, regular army efforts and the national uh strategic defense. So I just went through the pen and I became a witness and I looked out my test book.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Um as a young girl, I grew up in um in a hair salon. And my mother had a hair salon in the front of the house. And um I grew up in uh real tough circumstances, was having a hard time in life, and um I started to write help me all around my home on pieces of paper. And um help started uh coming in the form of um learning from the celebrities in the magazines of the hair salon. And my first two teachers were Mother Teresa and Elizabeth Taylor. And uh I continued to learn and grow from celebrities, and as I over the years worked with groups and worked with individuals in order to um impart these wonderful life tools to them, I began to tell them the stories exactly how I had learned from the celebrity. And after doing that a number of years, it came to me to write a book. And um, I want to reach more people. I still use these tools and I want to share them with others.

SPEAKER_05 6:24

That provokes a lot of questions for me.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Well, I love that.

SPEAKER_05 6:30

And being Catholic and being raised in a parochial school system, we learn about Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

Is that the same one you referred to? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yes, those were my first two teachers.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Give me an example for each one.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Okay. Well, here I was in this uh little small town, midwestern village, and uh Elizabeth Taylor gave me permission to believe there was a way out of there. There was a bigger life for me, a more glamorous life. And who knows, maybe I'd even have a yacht. And in this the the juxtaposition, Mother Teresa was in the magazines a lot because she just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And there was a little um just a little insert in a circle uh in which there was a story where a woman asked her, um, she told Mother Teresa, I want to come and help you with your mission in Calcutta. And Mother Teresa told her, No, don't come. Look in your backyard and find your own Calcutta. And so that sparked um a search for me to get on and find my mission in life.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Did anyone here think they wanted to quit in the middle of writing the book? And what caused you to think that way and what caused you to keep going?

SPEAKER_05 7:52

I came in at the tactical level right in this book. As I as my career continued to evolve and I reached a pinnacle of my career becoming a sergeant major, I started to see it from all three levels. But one thing is clear that at the end, when I was in Baghdad over a year now, a year, I realized that I was seeing another approach, and I decided I'm gonna finish the book, and I wrote 20 over 25,000 words in 10 days.

SPEAKER_06 8:27

I had thought about writing my book for many, many years, uh, but never really just had the idea of how I would start it, and yeah, maybe about how it might end, and not having any clue as to you know how I was gonna get from A to the end. So I all of a sudden found myself in a situation one time with work where I was asked to be a consultant in Y of all places, and uh, but it turned out I didn't have anything to read, and I was in a place where I didn't have any television, there was nothing to do. And I finally told myself, well, maybe now's the time I should start writing the book. So I started writing and writing and writing. And I've got, you know, I probably got five or six chapters written, you know, in in about a week's time. And I was just that's all my free time, that's what I was doing. And the work didn't really conflict with that, except for the day I had these things I was doing as a consultant, but at night I had all that time. Uh and then when I got back home, well, then I had to kind of relegate how I was going to do that, and so maybe now I can you know work on it a little bit here, a little bit there. But I stayed with it. And my goal was just to get to the end. And I knew nothing about how the nov the industry of novels and books and all that worked. In science, I knew exactly how it all works in terms of getting things published and journals and everything else. But I had no idea what the deal was here. And I didn't even really want to know. I figured I'm just gonna write the book. I don't know anybody who's written a book. I had had no knowledge of it, had never even run into anybody who had ever written a novel. But so I just kept working on it until I got the first draft done. You know, that took, I don't know, maybe a year or so, a little more than that. But then I started working on, you know, editing it. And that then I spent probably uh more time, years, editing what I'd already done, adding to it, taking things out, and so forth. Uh, but I never ever thought about not doing it. My goal was to get this thing done. And not knowing anything after that that I was going to be faced as far as getting it published. Uh and I had no knowledge of that. I thought, yeah, once you get it done, you get it published. Uh yeah, I learned the hard way that, like Rios does, it's not quite that easy. But I I really did just stick with it and want to get it done. I wanted to get to the end of the story. And I would read every chapter when I finished it, the first draft to my wife that night before we go to bed. And she was always just encouraging me. She wanted to know what was going to happen next. And I found that I didn't know what was going to happen next. I mean, I was like, I I I want to know that too. And that's what really kept me writing, is I want to know what's going to happen next because I'm making it up, but I always thought like I knew where I was going with it. So that helps in writing, I think, not know exactly where you're going with it, because then you want to see, you know, you want to see where it's going. And uh so that's kind of how that all worked out for me.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Cool. Well, mine's short and sweet. And um my biggest thing was getting started, making the commitment to start. So I never like got it started and thought about quitting, but it took me, it took me a while to commit to starting. And I found myself going through my life saying, is this all there is? I got a great life, but is this all there is? I think I was bored, uh, maybe not stretching myself enough. And um my big uh holdup was um, I don't want to do, I had a sense it was gonna be some work. I'm like, I don't want to do a whole bunch of work and it not sell. I really wanted people to read my book. I'm like, I don't want to do all that work and people not want to read my book. One day I was sitting in front of my commuter computer, I sat there and I thought, uh, I'm I think I'm gonna die. I think I'm going to die. I just feel like that. And a couple days later I ran into a girlfriend and I told her about my experience. And she said, Um, whenever you have a dream that's calling you, and you're not getting on the path of doing your dream, that's how you feel. Like you really gotta do the dream. Say yes to the dream. So I said yes. Then all the wonderful work came.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, yeah. It takes longer and it's harder than most people expect. That's that's you, that's you know, PARP, of course. For me, I wrote my first book, which this is a reprint of it, for 14 years. I was submitting it to traditional publishers, and I got 19 rejections. And believe me, there were many times I would throw that manuscript in the drawer, slam the drawer, and say, I'm done. But you notice I didn't throw it in the trash. Like Stephen King did, yes, with Carrie, and yes. Um, and then months later I would be pulling it. I get an idea, next thing you know, it's all out there on the table again. And I just couldn't stop. I couldn't stop. I knew I had a good idea, and that was what kept me going. So has the writing of this book changed you personally in any way?

SPEAKER_05 13:56

I wanted to move away from the concept of leadership is simply impulse. Leadership is honestly, brutally, and under sometimes the most difficult circumstances, responsibility. And that's what I wanted to put into the book.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

I would say for me, it's made me um, it's made me bigger, it's made me more. I do have a confession to make. Uh, I'm going to be a published author, but I'm really not a writer. Um I hate writing. And uh, I'm a speaker for years, I use my hands, and so to um to take myself and allow a development to come in which I could put those words uh onto the paper and into the computer really challenged me, and it really stretched me. And um I read a lot and others read a lot. I talk a lot about how important it is to do something new, and doing something new, um the older you get, the more challenging it is, I believe, because we've mastered so much. And to do something new, you feel awkward, I felt vulnerable, and the pushing through of that really a challenge and develop parts of me that I didn't even know I had in me.

SPEAKER_06 15:21

I remember going back as a as a young child, I was always the storyteller. I could just tell stories, and I could just go right off the top of my head. I remember one time and I think I was in fourth or fifth grade, and everybody had to go up and tell a story. And I just started telling the story, and I was just making it up as I was going. And I went on and on and on. And back then, you know, I liked everything that had anything to do with horror. So Frankenstein, the mummy, the vampires, Dracula. And I was just, I just would come up with a story and I incorporated every one of them. And then as soon as I'd almost be done, then I'd think, oh yeah, and then comes and I'd bring in another one. And I think I went through the entire list of every uh every comic book I'd ever, you know. It just it that part of it became very easy for me. And I guess it's it still does. Telling stories, I can tell stories. Uh, and I can just make them up off the top of my head if I need to. And so I'll uh I think that was one of when I went into actual educational, and that was no longer stories. Now I'm I'm just dealing with the truth. But having retired now that I'm working on novels, it's it's it's the truth, but it's my version of it. I want I want people to learn the truth, but I want them to do it through a story. And so uh for me, telling stories and and writing all comes hand in hand.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

If readers could take away just one thing from your book, what would that one thing be?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I would say for me it's uh find uh live your enjoie de vie. Just um just let go and uh do what you love, open up to receive more and more and uh live a more sparkly life, even more sparkly life.

SPEAKER_06 17:18

For me, my up and when writing this book, Cracked Island, which by the way is a metaphor for the earthquake that struck uh in 2010, uh but is I really wanted to tell a story and I wanted people to I I figure very few people go there, have gone there, or will ever go there. But I wanted everyone to learn about the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and how wonderful the people are, and the incredible culture they have, and the history that goes all the way back to the Tanyu Induan Indians that were there first, and then the Haitian slaves that were brought in from all over Africa. Columbus? This was one of the islands that Columbus arrived to in his first trip to the New World. And what story did he tell when he went back? He told the story to the queen there is gold on the people who live in E. The Indians that were there. And that was his argument for being able to go back, for her to send her back and back to the new world with all the gold. And she did. But when he got there, the Indians weren't wearing any gold. They had all figured out that that's why the Europeans were coming back was to steal their gold, and so they hid it. And for hundreds of years, Columbus was accused of having made up that story just so he could get another voyage out of the Queen. In 19, I think it was 1961, an anthropologist in Haiti decided, you know what, I betcha he wasn't mine. He actually discovered the gold hidden in caves in Haiti, all of which was confiscated by Papa Doc. Well, it's a whole other story there. Uh, but article was written in the New York Times in 1961. It's entitled something on the lines of Columbus Vindicate. The story was told me by someone while I was in Haiti, and that was really the main spark for writing the whole book. I just thought, this is incredible. That's just part of the history. It goes on and on and on. There is so much history there, it's just amazing. And I just wanted to be able to pass that on to other people.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

I'm a storyteller myself from different angles, but I focus on history. I studied it in college, studied it in the military. We use a lot of our history for the purpose of illustrating a lesson and and to hear another storyteller. It's unusual now for me at what I've done in my past. Because usually I'm the one standing time story, but it captivates me to hear Haiti. Because I'll be perfectly honest. My introduction to Haiti was back in the 1990s when Haiti was losing control, and there was a big division between the government and the people, and they had decided tentatively, let's begin to formulate plans to seize Haiti and bring it back under control. So I was in, I was a Marine Scout sniper, and we kept we kept war gaming. Are we gonna hit the Port of Prince or are we going to come into another route? And who's gonna work with us? And I thought, you know what? I've been so many, uh at that point I'd already been in Panama, Honduras, the borders of Nicaragua, working off the specific islands, uh, Tiger Island, and the and we were doing we've kind of stood up the contrast. And it was it was burst on the Marines wherever in Central America following the banana wars of the 1920s, and that was put on us too, as hey, we haven't been here in over 60 years, so be professional, you're ambassadors to your country. But without saying, the rule was everybody that you meet, and I'm gonna quote a famous drencher, every marine who ever watches this will know who I'm talking about, have a smile, shake their hand, and have a planet guilda. Because that's just the way the world was, and it still is in a great degree. But Haiti to hear somebody rave about Haiti, that's interesting. That is really interesting, and I would love to hear more stories.

SPEAKER_06 21:55

Well, it goes back to the 1920s, my main character. Is turns out it's going to be an ancestor of someone of a Marine Marine Sergeant. Which one I probably heard the name, but Fawson Workis. He wrote the book The White King of Lagana. And in the 1920s, he was stationed in Haiti. Okay, at the Benning At a War. And uh the natives there, particularly on this island, they considered him to be the return of the White King, who was nobody other than Christopher Columbus. And they believed that he would always be coming back. And all of a sudden there was this Marine there, and it had to be him. He wrote a book, it's called The White King Alaganav. And that was so obviously I brought that into my whole story. I thought my main character is going to be, well, it turns out his middle name is Fauston.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

I don't remember there.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

What advice would you give to someone who says, someday I'll write a book?

SPEAKER_05 23:04

If I had to attack it in that manner, the first phase is the idea you're going to write a book. The second is completing the book. And the third phase is getting the industry to listen to you. But the point is, you're going to have to hustle. You're going to have to make your voice hurt. You're going to have to maybe do a little uh Linda B. Johnson, grab the individual by the back of the elbow and shake him a little and say, listen to me.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Well, I would say take a um uh take one small first step. Like maybe do an outline. What I did was I did an outline and I printed it all out and I hole punched it and put it in a three-ring binder and uh see how you feel, and then maybe take the next small step. And there were times where I would write and I would not write. I would not write even for a couple of years. Uh because I was also living my life and enjoying the life I had and new grandchildren and and new connections and um and just take just start by taking some small steps and see. Let it start rolling.

SPEAKER_06 24:13

Yeah, I guess I sort of feel the same way as the other two authors, uh all three authors, I'm sure. Uh you want to tell your story, and if you don't get it down in writing, it doesn't exist. And even if uh hardly anyone reads it. It's a piece of history. If you get it published any way, state, or form, it's out there. So it's it's it's part of something you really accomplished that will go way beyond you. Even to this day, I hope that you know, even if I I don't become famous while I'm alive, maybe all of a sudden it will get discovered later on, because that happens all the time. And and it that's just be part of my heritage that that will pass on, and that's what people need to think about if they're writing a book is that you know it's part of you. A story you write, it becomes a part of you. Those characters seem real to you. You can't write about people, you know, you just you make them up, but you know, you got a vision in the uh what they look like. He's just some sort of movie star of some type or another. But you know, you've you've visualize these different people. You visualize yourself in these situations. And uh it's uh it's an interesting thing to do, but it is very, very uh challenging. I had no clue when I wrote this first book of what was involved in getting it published. I thought for sure that what I do is I I I'll wait while I get it written, and then I went to the library and you know, got a book on it, you know, with all the list of all these different publishers, and I'm going through trying to pick out which of the two or three that I you know think would be best for me. And then I just mail off the whole manuscript to these different publishers, some which answered, some which didn't. But most of them were saying, well, you need to have an agent. Uh but I was thinking, and I read about these agents, and I thought, well, why do I need an agent? I can you know I can negotiate this thing myself, but you know, why if you want the book, let me know, and then you can recommend who you think I should have as my agent. Yeah. I just thought that agent was someone there just to you know work out the contract and you know, blah, blah, blah, but it had nothing to do with actually getting it published. You know, if I'd known any of those things, I don't sure if I could have written the book, but I already written it. So later on then I started sending it off to uh agents. Now I got a book on that. And I went through it at first. I thought, well, I'll pick an agent. And I just picked one out that lived not too far from me, the city that was the biggest city nearby, maybe, which was St. Louis at the time. I found the agent was there and the light she would be good. So I figured I so I sent everything to her. About two weeks later, I get this big package back. I said, hi golly, that's it. I got my contract. I open it up, I look at the big folder, I pull out the papers, the letter on top, I start reading it. I get through about three lines, and I realize, man, this sounds familiar. It was my letter. It was my letter that I submitted. I then I looked at what all the papers were behind. There wasn't a contract, it was just that she sent back my manuscript. And I think, well, what is this? And then I saw in very lightly written in pencil, all in the top corner of my letter, it says, not for me. That was my introduction to the whole situation. That's when I learned that you know what, this isn't going to be easy. Uh, and uh this is you know gonna take a lot of work.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

My first contract was uh I made $1,000 and no royalties. That's my first book. My second book was a work for hire, another thousand dollars, no royalties. They owned it. I never did get the rights back to that book. And that's the way they were doing back in those days, and they were making tons and tons of money. So yeah, I mean, after a while, you know, you sit there and you wonder, what am I doing this for? What am I doing this for? Well, for me, I love writing, I just love it.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

I love you that you love writing. People they said they I type for hours in the morning. And I'm like, you know, I've got a lot of notes from over the years, and I cut them out and I lay them into a paragraph, I tape them together, and then I type my paragraph, you know. So I love you that you love writing. But I would like to address, we've thrown out uh hard work a lot in here in the last 15 minutes. Uh, and I want to distinguish between um there's a hard work um, or you're not getting anywhere, you're living in a frenzied life, and uh and it and it's it creates a lot of stress within you. But this is a um this is a hard work of doing something that challenges you, doing something that's new for you, uh, feeling your way. And so it actually, I think, feeds the body and and feeds the soul in a different way than a different type of hard work. So I just don't want to scare off any uh listeners that it's uh it's a good hard work. I call it chop wood carry water. You know, sometimes things in life just kind of and we want this, that it just shows up on a silver platter, and then sometimes there's a time to chop wood carry water, puts maybe blisters on your hands and some sweat on your brow, but it's um but it feeds you because you're on purpose.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

On purpose, that's good. That's good. So I want to wrap this up by uh bringing one final question, and that is what was your publishing decision and why did you go that route?

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Well, I'll speak to publishing. Uh while I was writing my book, I was concerned about publishing. And I tried to um to I tried to release that concern because I'm like, until I've written the book, there's nothing to publish. So I kept, I would get myself back on the writing, and I made my publishing decision like I do many of my other decisions through relationship. And um I first met Lana a year and a half ago, and I started calling her my book mentor. And I saw her uh do a presentation hour and a half. I was in the front table of the room, the millionaire's table, the millionaire's row. And um uh, and so I made a commitment that I would drive an uh the first Friday of every month, I drive an hour up to her two-hour class and an hour home. And um, and at that time she was not in the publishing in, well, she didn't own her own publishing company, but uh out of my relationship with her, um I decided to choose Vendela. And I liked that um uh that we can put our books on Amazon and then Vendela hand uh handles it going to libraries and large print, to retail stores and to bookstores. So I like that that combination. And uh, but it's about uh really respecting Lana as the leader and trusting Lana as a leader. Um that's how I made my decision.

SPEAKER_05 31:40

Lana, being humble, looks at me and she goes, Well, Harry, I just don't want to say anything because and I don't I'm not gonna solicit my company to you because I think you have already a path through Trillion. But if you want to choose me to publish your book, we can sit down and discuss it.

SPEAKER_06 32:00

Similar, I guess, story, you know, in Meeting Alan Island, she gave a presentation to the Mean Island uh Writers Association, and uh she's talking about all kinds of different things and what they do and so forth, and you know how they move forward with things. And I had previously published this book, but it's out of print, and the the previous publisher is no longer in existence. It was one of small publishing houses. It was a standard kind of regular publisher, but uh, you know, the book is no longer on Amazon. They show it, but they don't have any copies of it anymore. And uh so I hadn't even really thought about doing a uh second edition until I heard her talk. And so I kind of went up to her after the meeting and said, Hey, do you do second edition? She says, Yeah, we do those. And uh now find out her first book is that. And uh so I just told her a little bit about it, and she said, Well, send it to me. We'll let you know, you know. But she was she seemed very open to it, and then I just got all this very good feedback, and it was like, you know, this is a no-brainer. Uh I'm not gonna go through all that other stuff. It's different than your thing. So I don't know how to feel. So, anyway, so so just want to move forward with this, and um, you're looking forward to seeing it republished, and uh and I'm hoping it's gonna reach a much, much bigger audience, which is what uh I'm really hopeful for. And uh so I'm currently writing the third book. Uh my and I'm that third to it, so we'll see where that goes. But it's got a marine sergeant uh in it. But uh so anyway, uh anyway, that's where it all goes, but uh, I'm looking forward to working with Nadala.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, we're happy to have you with us, thank you. Yeah. Uh is there anything that you would like to mention about your next step or this project or anything at all that you want to bring out before we I had the website uh that I'm redoing now.

SPEAKER_06 34:01

Uh and the goal was redoing it because it was mostly this, it's it's all about my original book, but now I need to get I might have a new cover for it and everything else, and the story's gonna be slightly changed, not greatly, but a little bit. Uh so I want to put that all out again. So anyway, I'm redoing my whole uh website. It's it's Chris Colder.com, but uh but it it's gonna include and I'm kind of setting it up so any books that come down the road, uh I guess kind of add them on easily rather than having it just you know based on a book. It's really more of the author web page. And then hopefully, you know, like you know, and Chris Room's like, yeah, AVM all in there. So so that's where I'm heavy with that.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Well, I have a w uh web website ready to launch shortly just for my book, and I would love for you to find me at my website. You write me and I'll write you back. I'd love to do that. Mine is www.alexandraharris.com. I have long hair, and my last name is Harris.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Excellent.

SPEAKER_05 35:14

I'm absorbed in that.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Next one.

SPEAKER_05 35:19

I will be logged in a website soon. I don't have the address. I'm losing my hair, Alex. And then I just I'm not on my butt I'm just grateful for the opportunity to sit here amongst other authors and hear their experiences. And I know that I'll probably look back on it and go, okay, where did I get them that? And you constantly have to do self-reflexion to get to the next step. Don't stop.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

And the last thing I'd like to add is that um play with the team, allow people to support you. You do not have to do it alone. Um and it mentors will come, you'll attract sidekicks, you'll attract volunteers, and um what you don't know, other people know. Authors very willingly share what they know with each other. It's a great community of people to be in. Uh, I grew up mostly um like a self-cleaning oven. And um, the last few years I've really uh worked on playing on a team better, leading a team better, playing on a team better, um, letting other people support me. But people will show up for you and your book. And you don't have to do it, you won't do it alone. And it and it's fun to have others help. I I call people and they will just stop whatever they're doing and call me right back. You know, what what do what do you need to know about this little section outside? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Well, it's our privilege to work with you, and uh I'm excited at what's ahead. We have a growing team of authors and team. Uh, we have six books in the pipeline right now that's great that are going to be coming out at the first of the year. So um if you're interested in Vendela, look it up. Go on our website. Everything is there. I believe in full disclosure. And uh Vendela Publishing is V as in Victor E N D E L A Publishing.com. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for pulling up a chair, and we'll see you next time.