There Is Nothing Better Than Stories

Self-Publishing: The Other Side of the Book

If I had found a traditional publisher, I probably would have set my books aside more quickly. Self-publishing compels me to carry them all the way through, to accompany them until their first public appearance.

Editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design, adjusting Amazon settings… These tasks excite me less than writing, but I do not find them tedious. They simply require me to stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a designer, an editor — sometimes even a salesperson — and to reread the text to the point of nausea.

On the one hand, I would love to let go of the baby and devote myself to the… fetus — that is, the book I am currently writing, which seems — as always — the best one yet.

On the other hand, I take real pleasure in controlling every detail: choosing a typeface, adjusting a margin, designing a cover, setting a price. Dressing the text in its finest attire, without outside intervention.

The book then leaves my computer to meet attentive and open readers. The readers, too, commit. They devote a few hours of their life to someone else’s story.

A Question of Scent is now in their hands. It is a strange and silent moment.

Here is what the book is about:

In a world reshaped by genetic engineering, “hybrid” humans can graft animal DNA to enhance their minds, their bodies, and their lives. But as one detective will discover, evolution always comes at a price.

When Adam chooses to undergo the splicing procedure—augmenting his senses with sharp canine instincts—it is meant to give him the career boost he so desperately needs. Instead, it unleashes desires he can’t control and a sensitivity that borders on madness. Between a crumbling marriage, a skeptical partner, and a growing attraction to his superior, he struggles to keep his mind from slipping into the wild.

When the mutilated body of a young hybrid woman is discovered, the investigation pulls Adam deep into a society torn between enhanced hybrids and an extremist movement of purists determined to eradicate genetic “deviants.”

As he descends further into a labyrinth of obsession and conspiracy, Adam begins to question not only the identity of the killer he is hunting… but his own.

If you feel like it, you can find it here.

In my opinion, there is nothing better than stories.The older ones are in the archives.The next ones are still being written.

Until next time,

L. M. Rapp