Your Help is Needed!

I started writing almost as soon as I could hold a crayon. Mom would tell me to draw a picture and I would draw a story instead. I always loved the English assignments that called for an essay or a research paper to be written. I was in my element. In High School, Creative Writing was by far my favorite course. I dreamed of being a journalist, and an author with books in my bookcase with my name on the spine. But real life intervened.

I was prevented from going to college because of family dynamics and I was expected to get married and bear children – after all that's what respectable girls did, even in the mid-1970s after the feminist revolution that supposedly changed that. I did get married and I had two wonderful children. But during the years they were small and I was a stay at home mom, my writing was solely in my journals.

In the mid-'90s, when my kids were well ensconced in school, I started writing a novel. Even though I'd never been there, the novel was about Charleston, SC. Through some serendipitous events I was able to visit the city – on my own, no children or husband to slow me down – and I knew for sure my novel had to take place there. But when I returned home I discovered my fledgling manuscript had "accidentally" been thrown away. I was so discouraged I threw away my dream of writing too. I went back to my journals and gave up the idea of ever writing anything anyone would ever want to see.

Fast forward to 2006. I was ten years into being single again, had come out as a lesbian, and my children were grown. The love of my life, Lisa. blessed me with her presence early that year and one of the things she kept asking me was what were my dreams. For ages I insisted I didn't have any. But I finally relented and told her I wanted to be a writer.

With her encouragement I wrote my first novel, Welcome Home, and submitted it for publication. Imagine my surprise when it was accepted. My dream was coming true! The book was released in 2009 and got good reviews and I felt awesome.

I was introduced to the concept of National Novel Writing Month in 2008. I decided to tackle it with the idea of the novel I had started in the nineties brewing in my heart and mind. Out of the Past was born. After a lot of hard work I submitted it to a different publisher and was thrilled when it was accepted and released in September, 2012.

Then the bottom fell out. First, due to issues with the first publisher and some downsizing they were doing, my contract for Welcome Home reverted back to me. Okay, I thought. I'll fix this baby up, do some rewriting and re-editing, get a new cover and re-release it myself. I was working on that endeavor when Out of the Past was released on September 12 and then the owner of the publishing company passed away on September 26. The company shut its doors in early November and now neither of my books is on the market.

From that adversity another dream I'd been toying with for years began to take shape. I would start my own publishing imprint, Rainbow Tales Publishing. I'd talked about it for years and a dear friend had designed me an awesome mermaid logo. So, I started doing some research. I discovered self-publishing is easy if you want to take shortcuts, but not quite so easy if you want to do it right. And not so inexpensive.

I began asking people to invest in my idea and so far, to date, two wonderful people have been quite generous. But I still fall short, very short, of the amount I need to put these two books on the market plus one more next year. Hopefully, the royalties from the sales of those three books will finance further books.

But before that can happen I need to raise some money. After doing some math, adding up the costs of what my team will charge for book cover design, editing and formatting and multiplying that by three and throwing in a little extra for padding, I decided I need to raise approximately $3000. To that end I started a campaign on a website called Indiegogo, which helps people raise money for various reasons.

I'm not asking for money with nothing in return to the generous people who donate. There are perks involved – the more you give, the more you get. You can find my campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/rainbowtalespub. If you would like to see my business plan before donating, please feel free to email me at rainbowtales@outlook.com and I'll get one to you ASAP. And if you want to experience some of my writing, as well as see my photography and art, visit my website at www.GlendaPoulter.com.

Some people think I'm begging for money and that it's unseemly. Yes, I am begging. But I feel it's for a good reason and there will be great returns for the money once my books are back on the market. I'm proud of my writing, of my talent, of the gift I've been given. I want to share that with others, but I won't be able to without the help from you.

Thank you for your support and I look forward to hearing from you.