When I started writing, 'The Struggles and Growth of a Man Part 1' it wasn’t supposed to be a series. The goal was to write a standalone book with this and all of my other books and that would be it. Until I read an article about author’s garnering more readers through writing books in series. When I learned of that, I started researching other authors who write series.
What I realized is authors write long series and I didn’t want to really do that. I always told myself, the most I’d write in a series is 5 books (which is going to change in the future). I made a decision to continue the series after I published Code Blue and The World We Live In (those would eventually turn into 5 book series themselves).
The main character Robert, I knew he had to have some characteristics of me. I wanted to bring him out through my voice with the social stigmas aspect of it. When I discuss that in Part 1 of the series, that’s my voice speaking that through observation of the world. It’s the little things that most readers would never know but I feel it’s my obligation to share those little tidbits about writing my first book.
The world has all of these stigmas of what men should be and Robert learns it’s not all true. I wanted to write something that will resonate with not just men in today’s world but also women who may have young kids growing into adults who need guidance. There aren’t a lot of books written like this series so it was important to write something that would impact people.
I wanted to make Robert just a regular guy, just like anyone else who deals with the daily struggles of life but then has a backstory to his life. I needed to have some components to this story such as his life story, his mother, his brother Michael and eventually his mentor and father figure Mr. Marble.
When I was crafting his backstory and his life, I had to make it believable to the reader. If a man is reading it, I wanted Robert’s life story to resonate with them in some way. If the reader was a woman, I want her to feel Robert and understand him. He was a man in his 20s trying to find himself and figure out this life with no major guidance. His father is someone that gets incorporated into the story and you learn of that relationship very quickly in this series.
I honestly thought my book was so good that people would discover it on Amazon and the sky would be the limit in my success. I started thinking of my life ahead, I had no website, no social media presence, a terrible book cover and the book was oversized at 8 x 10 (it basically looked like a children’s book).
Luckily I learned things and got sound advice from some good people and I resized my books to 6 x 9, and I’ve changed my book cover 3 times with this series. I’ll honestly say a lot has happened since I wrote my first book (started a website with blogs, recorded audiobooks and part 1 of this book is available on my website through audio, YouTube page, and other things).
For my first book, it felt good to write it (granted I wanted to change the beginning of the book numerous times). When I published it, it honestly felt surreal that my book was available to everyone.
Here’s some notes below that show how I wrote this first book out. The first book of this series The Struggles and Growth of a Man Part 1 is on Bookpatch and other bookstores. Part 1 is also available in audio so you can listen to it too.
Be good everyone and go accomplish your goals.
Jamell Crouthers
Aquarianmind
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