Who among us hasn’t thought about writing a book? OK, you in the
back; you can put your hand down now.
Port Orchard writer Rosie Atkinson, author of the historical
romance “Albin’s Letters,” is living proof that self-publishing has
democratized the world of books.
…
Hilda Sjostedt, a comely Swedish girl with one blue eye and one
brown eye, has fallen in love.
John, her strict and bigoted older brother (and guardian), is one
of the most powerful men in Helsinki, and he heartily disapproves
of Albin Putkonen, the Finn who has won Hilda’s heart.
Albin is from Saamiland in the far north of Scandinavia, or
“Lapland” as John calls it.
Those people, says John, are “inferior … flower picking trash.”
Albin and Hilda share a forbidden tryst and hatch a desperate plan
that starts with a long separation. Will the Scandinavian
star-crossed lovers be reunited? Or will fate — and Hilda’s brother
— conspire to keep them apart?
So begins “Albin’s
Letters,” a novella by Rosie Atkinson and the true story of her
grandparents’ journey to North America.
The book,
published this year on Amazon.com, has racked up a number of
favorable reviews.
“I found myself rooting for Albin and hoping that the truth would
come to light for Hilda,” wrote Laurel Johnson of Southworth. “This
was an easy read, written in a lilting style that left me very
curious about Albin and Hilda’s progeny. I hope Ms. Atkinson will
tell us more.”
Atkinson, 83 of Port Orchard, has had a lifelong career as a
writer, starting with writing poetry as a young homemaker. She
spent many years in the newspaper business, first as a columnist
for the Port Orchard Independent, then as women’s editor for the
Bremerton Sun (now the Kitsap Sun).
Formerly an avid boater — with her husband Charlie and their six
children — Atkinson has written numerous articles for Nor’westing,
Sea and other boating magazines. She also wrote a column for a
weekly Kitsap County publication, Wednesday Magazine.
After Atkinson left the Sun in 1979, her focus turned to fiction
writing. She joined the Peninsula Chapter of Romance Writers of
America and got up to speed on the latest technology.
“One of the first things I wanted to do was get a home computer,”
Atkinson wrote in her
blog. “Charlie found one for sale by a fellow employee at
Boeing. He brought it home, plunked it onto a table and said,
‘There, now go ahead and write your heart out.’”
Atkinson watched other writing club members clamber their way into
the publishing world. Fellow member Debbie Macomber, also of Port
Orchard, is now a regular on the New York Times Bestseller
list.
Similar success eluded Atkinson, even though she wrote almost every
day.
“I never stopped writing, but I lost the incentive to do anything
about publishing my work,” Atkinson wrote in her blog. “For one
thing, it seemed so daunting and I knew nothing about publishing
books.”
Then in 2013, Atkinson joined the legions of writers who have found
self-publishing a viable option for getting their book out in the
world.
As the Internet has exploded, so have online self-publishing
programs and resources.
Publishers World, in a
recent article, announced a service of Bloomsbury Publishing
that helps writers sift through the myriad DIY options. The
Writers
& Artists Self Publishing Comparison requires registration and
completion of a questionnaire, information from which may be shared
with service providers.
Atkinson was fortunate to have her daughter, Phyllis Counts of
Seattle, help her sift through the options. Counts, a graphic
designer, made the cover art for “Albin’s Letters” and hooked
Atkinson up with people to read and critique the manuscript. A
librarian who is a friend of Count’s fact-checked the book.
“It takes a village,” said Atkinson, who advises anyone interested
in self-publishing to have their book professionally edited and the
cover professionally designed.
Kitsap Sun reporter Steven Gardner, who in 2012 self-published
“Spill
Your Guts’ Guts,” seconded the recommendation for a
professional editor.
“If you are thinking of skipping the editor part, let me shake some
sense into you,” Gardner said. “If you don’t have anyone to edit
your book, I guarantee you will find things in your finished copy
that you will regret. Your book will look self-published, which I
guarantee will lose you sales.”
Gardner’s book is an adaptation of stories from his Field of Steve podcast. If I had
written the book jacket blurb, I would have called “Guts” a
humorous, unaffected tribute to human longings, foibles and
follies.
Gardner assembled the project with two Amazon self-publishing
programs
Create Space, for the print edition, and Kindle Direct
Publishing for the eBook.
Gardener’s overall cost for the two programs was about $100.
Self-published authors should expect to pay an editor several
hundred dollars on top of that, he said.
For future projects, Gardner plans to be more aggressive about
marketing, wrangling book clubs about a month before publication,
scouring online for interview opportunities and working with local
bookstores to do readings.
Atkinson, too has “a few more books in the mill,” including a
sequel to “Albin’s Letters” in which we learn more about Hilda’s
feisty spirit or “sisu,” the Finnish expression for determination,
the will to finish the job at any cost.
Speaking of which, Atkinson advises anyone with the itch to write a
book not to give up.
“Everybody has a book inside them, if they can just get it out and
write it,” she said. “
Besides the Albin-Hilda sequel, Atkinson has in the hopper a hot
romance about a newspaper reporter in Seattle and a couple of
half-written “creative non-fiction” projects. Some days, she gets
overwhelmed thinking of all there is to write.
“But hell, I’ll probably live ’til I’m 115, so there’s still time,”
she said.
Albin’s Letters on Kindle or paperback copies may be ordered from Amazon.com or by calling Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 360-698-0945.
