A warm welcome to author Heidi Cullinan stopping over at our blog with a guestpost about re-publishing , promoting her re- release of “Hero” and also offering a Giveaway !

 

 

Feels Like the First Time: Reflections on Revising and Republishing My First Published Work

 

My favorite story about Hero being my first novel was that I think I was the last one to realize that’s what it was.

 

Originally this was supposed to be my tester book. I thought it was a novella—in my head, 60,000 words is short, and so I thought this would be ebook only. It was my trial balloon, my first foray. Special Delivery would be my first novel. This was my dry run. And then Elizabeth North told me there would be print, and called it a novel and I realized, oh hey—I published a novel, I guess.

 

All my experiencing with publishing was with New York, so when I sold it in August and she told me it would be available for purchase in December, I thought she was pulling my leg. I’d been well trained to know publishing took eighteen months in a tearing hurry—four months was unfathomable. And yet that’s exactly what happened. I had a real book in my hands by Christmas. I was a published author.

 

I got a $250 advance, I made 25% royalties, and I think I sold 200 copies the first quarter. I got my first check and went, “Oh. Wow, some work to do here.”

 

It’s five years later now, and boy have things changed. I actually get zero advances now, but I make a lot more than 25%, and I sell more than 200 copies on the first day of a presale. My writing is very different too—when I reread Hero to republish it, I did a lot of wincing, and my fingers itched to fix things I’d never let myself do now.

 

But mostly, I sat on my hands. I cleaned up a few things here and there, tightened some of my worst sins, but only in the grammar where no one would notice. I rewrote no scenes, altered no character. I can’t say that will happen for every book I rerelease, but for this one, my very first book, to do anything but let it stand as it was when it first came out felt false.

 

Hero is very much who I was in the summer of 2009. I didn’t even know anyone wrote gay romance when I penned it. I seriously thought it was me and some gay guys in the 1970s, because I did no market research. I was tired of publishing and the rules and the stupid hoops I couldn’t ever get through no matter what I did. I shut off the Internet, ignored everything anyone had ever told me, and wrote this book. There’s a lot in it I wouldn’t write now. But not all of that is that I’ve evolved. Some of the themes, when I reread them, I realized I wanted to explore again, that I’d moved away from things I used to hold as truth, and maybe that wasn’t so great. There’s self-consciousness, yes, but there’s also honesty.

 

My husband, an avid Madonna fan, always laments she doesn’t embrace her past, dismissing it as she forges boldly into the future, which will undoubtedly be better. I dedicated Hero to Dan for a lot of reasons, and I rededicate it again to him now. I’m not decrying my past, and I’m not fixing it, because it’s just fine as it is. It is who I was then. And to be honest, when I reread it, I realize it’s who I still am today by and large, too.

 

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Hero

  Reissuing August 2014 from Wilde City

Blurb:

Construction worker Hal Porter knows he’s nobody special. But when strange events draw him into a magical world, he becomes the only man who can free Morgan, a lonely, long-enchanted shape-shifter. Whether he feels he’s worthy or not, Hal is the hero Morgan has been waiting for.

However, Hal’s task becomes personal as he and Morgan fall in love. Now, to save Morgan and give himself the happily ever after he’s always longed for, Hal will need to do something far more daunting than face Morgan’s captor or finally come out of the closet… 
 
He’ll have to believe in himself.

This title has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.

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Buy links:

Wilde City

Amazon

 

Goodreads • Excerpt • Book Page on Website

 

About the Author :

Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and ten-year-old daughter. Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights and is proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality. Find out more about Heidi, including her social networks, at www.heidicullinan.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Little excerpt taken from chapter 1 ( for the complete chapter go to Heidi’s blog page)

“Hey!”

The shout jarred in Hal’s head, but it wasn’t until something jutted him hard in the elbow that he stopped.  He turned, dizzy, and annoyed, then stifled a wince when he saw who it was.  It was Todd, the shift manager.  The other crew members had warned Hal about Todd—he didn’t do much work, they said, because he was too busy watching everyone else. Some thought he was some sort of spy for the investors.  Whatever he was, he was strange. Todd was short and stocky and had the complexion of a toad, but he had oddly bright blond hair that he wore, for some inexplicable reason he wore in a pageboy bob.  The bob was gleaming at him now, as Todd glared at him.

“What are you doing?” Todd demanded.  “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

Hal looked at him strangely.  “They just called end of shift ten minutes ago,” Hal reminded him.  You were the one shouting through the megaphone.  Remember?

Todd glared and nodded at bar, making his gleaming hair dance again.  “Then why are you heading back into the site?”

“I’m not,” Hal said, pointing to the bar.  “I was just—”  He stopped. Then he stared.

The woman was gone.  The bar was gone.  The lot was  empty again.

“You were just what?” Todd demanded.

Hal ignored him.  “I swear, I saw—”  He leaned forward, squinting, as if somehow this would help.  It didn’t.  He stood up and ran a hand through his hair.  “Nothing,” he said, trying to sound casual.  “I thought I saw something, but I didn’t.”   He shook his head, then bent to retrieve the tools he’d dropped.  “Forget it.  I’m just tired.  I’m seeing things.”

“This heat will do it to you,” Todd said, conversationally.  But he was watching Hal like a hawk.  “You should go home.  Get some sleep.”

“Or get drunk,” Hal murmured, then shouted and dropped the tools again when he looked up.

The bar was back, and so was the woman.  She was looking at him with wide, angry eyes, and she was beckoning to him furiously.

“What is it now?” Todd demanded, but he didn’t sound impatient.  He sounded wary.

Hal rubbed at his head, pretty sure there was something wrong with it.  He glanced at the shift manager.  “That lot over there, the empty one—you see anything in it?” The woman shook her head and began to motion to him more frantically.  Hal added, carefully, “You see anybody standing there?”

Todd laughed. Nervously.  “It’s bed for you,” he said.  “Either that or you need to get laid.”

Hal turned to Todd, frowning at him.  “What do you mean, I need to get laid?”

Todd drew back.  He looked suddenly strained and held up his hands.  “Hey, it’s you hallucinating women, buddy.”

Hal raised his eyebrows.  “I never said it was a woman that I saw.”

Todd’s complexion went from ruddy to pale.  “You did.  I remember.”  He took a few more hurried steps backwards.  “Hey, look, I gotta—”  He turned, abruptly, then waddled off towards the office trailer.

Hal watched him go, more confused than ever.  So Todd had seen something.  Hal wasn’t hallucinationg—or, at least, it wasn’t just him hallucinating.  But Todd was upset by it.  Why?  And what did it all mean?

 

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