There I was, standing behind the table at the Spring Book Bash. With two books vastly different from each other. A dystopian thriller, and a coming-of-age fiction.
Life in Katie’s Shoes was published in 2020. As a kid, I battled with addiction and divorce within my family unit from 2nd grade til the death of my biological father at 18. There was no one who I could relate to who went through similar things that I had gone through. This book’s singular goal was to touch one person’s life. Be relatable to a single person. This was my first published book. Without knowing anything of how many times you had to actually edit a book before self-publishing, refined structure, etc… I word-vomited and put bits and pieces of my life story into this book.
A recently single divorced mother of a six-year-old (my main character starts out at 6) stood in front of me and asked if I had gone through what I wrote about. I’ve never made this story about my life story. ‘Cause it is fiction. But I found myself telling a part of my story today to a few people who were touched by how I described this book.
This book isn’t formatted perfectly. There are some misspelled words I didn’t catch. Some paragraphs are ‘too long’ by industry standards. Could I fix it? Sure.
But as of now- this book tells more than one of my stories. It also tells the story of a girl who used writing and still uses writing as her coping mechanism. Who is not embarrassed by little mistakes because it shows my journey as an author.
My formatting, structure, and word-checking will get better as I continue to write and publish my books. I will always look at this book and remember the nights I cried writing it. The night I spent four hours teaching myself KDP publishing to publish it. And the immense bravery I channeled from my child self to fictionalize a part of my story, to hopefully help that singular person I set out to comfort. It’s important to remember your journey and your ‘why.’
Danae Decker 