My New Decade’s Resolution
at the beginning of 2010 was that by 2020, I would publish my first book. Later
in 2010, I wrote a short story to go along with my Capstone project, which was
my final project before receiving my Bachelor’s degree in Human Communications
(essentially an English major but with philosophy thrown in). The topic of my Capstone project was the Armenian genocide, so along with a term paper on the subject I included a short fiction piece that would tie in with the theme. This story took
place in 1915, and focused on two
orphan boys and their experiences during the Van resistance, during which the besieged
Armenian population of the city of Van stood their ground against the Ottoman
Turkish army, holding out until the invading Russian army arrived and saved
them. The story went over quite well with my instructors, and I got a good
grade on it.
I started in Fresno State’s Creative
Writing graduate program in 2011, having used this short story as a writing
sample to get accepted. What I didn’t know about this program before I
enrolled, but was apparently common knowledge to everyone else, was that in these
types of programs genre fiction is frowned upon. Quite heavily, in fact. They
only wanted us writing reality-based, slice-of-life type stories dealing with
real world issues. In short, literary fiction. “Creative” Writing, indeed. So
you can imagine the absolute hazing I got when I tried to workshop my fantasy
novel in class. No one had a single good thing to say about it, and afterward
the teacher pulled me aside and asked me if I really belonged in their program.
I didn’t move to Fresno and take
out a student loan for nothing, so it was time for a change of tactics. I
dusted off that short story from my Capstone project and decided to expand it
into a novel as my Master’s thesis. If I was going to have to write literary
fiction, it would have to at least be historical literary fiction so it wouldn’t
bore me to death to write it. This all seemed like the right decision at the
time. I do think getting my MFA in Creative Writing did make me a better writer;
but other than that, the degree hasn’t gotten me a job, and worst of all they
never taught me a single thing about publishing (why teach basic life skills
writers need in the real world when you can make us write 20 page term papers
about the works of William Faulkner?), so I feel like I went $80,000 in the
hole for nothing and that it was basically all a scam. I probably should have dropped
out then and there and done an internship in Armenia instead. Hindsight is
20/20 and all that. But I digress.
I spent
the next three years working on the novel, workshopping chapters in class,
gaining valuable feedback from my peers and instructors. I read firsthand accounts
from people who lived through the Van resistance, and researched everything so
that it would be as historically accurate as I could make it. I drew
inspiration from my own grandfather’s autobiography. My grandfather was a
survivor of the Soviet gulag camps (that’s definitely another blog entry for
another time). I decided my main character, Vartan Manukyan, would be telling
the story of his youth surviving the Armenian genocide from a solitary
confinement cell in a gulag in Siberia. The novel would be called Odinochka:
Armenian Tales from the Gulag. “Odinochka” is the Russian word for the
solitary confinement cell my character was in, and it also can mean alone or
lonely, so I thought it was a good title. It all gradually came together, and
after I presented my thesis the same teacher who asked if I belonged in the
program would later confide in me that she thought my thesis was one of the
best that year, in part because it was so different from what anybody else was
writing.
I graduated, moved from California
to Florida with my then-fiancé, soon after I did my internship in Armenia, and
once all that was done, I felt it was time to have a look at Odinochka
again with fresh eyes, have it edited, and try to get it published. I knew I
wanted to write genre fiction, but I figured I could get my serious book out
first, and maybe get my foot in the door with publishers. But it was a hard
sell to literary agents. Too foreign, too hard to market. I could have kept
submitting to different agents until someone said yes, but I took a seminar on
self-publishing and got to thinking that would be the best way to get this book
out. I started my own publishing company, Vishapakar Publishing, just to
publish this one book. My wife and I both did the front cover (which I think
turned out pretty good, I still have the painting hanging in my bedroom). I
designed everything, and made an ebook edition too. I published it through Lulu.
Within about four months of deciding to self-publish, it was released in May
2016. I’d met my Decade Resolution, technically.
But there were things I failed to
consider. Looking back now, I wish I had gone with a title easier for Americans
to say. People have a difficult enough time with my name after all. I had a
local book store refuse to carry it because both the title and my name were too
foreign-sounding and they didn’t think it would sell. I also learned that if
you’re going to self-publish, you’d better have money for marketing. I did try
to market. I advertised on Facebook, I added it to Goodreads, I got people to
leave reviews on Amazon, I even made a TV Tropes page for it…but the task ultimately
proved too overwhelming for someone with as limited funds as I had. Most of the
people who bought copies were family or friends, and since 2016 I sell maybe
about two copies a year. I still hope it will sell better once I have other
books out. For now, it’s just something to put on my resume, that I published a
book once. I think unless I somehow get rich (if that ever happens), I’m much
better off sticking to traditional publishing, where they handle all of the
editing and marketing costs. The trick is actually getting a literary agent
interested.
Anyway, if you’re curious to read it,
it is still up for sale on Lulu. If you prefer Amazon, it’s available there
too.
Lulu
Amazon
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