I have self-published two books as e-book and print-on-demand formats, distributed by Amazon. One was a memoir under a pen name. The more recent one, my debut novel, was under my legal name. I didn't promote the memoir. Only a handful of people read it, whom I told it existed. It never was found under millions of books on Amazon. Let's face it, if no one knows about it, no one's going to buy it, are they? I 'unpublished it' and thought I had deleted the files, then recently recovered it. I am going to edit it, rename it Bipolar Cringe and republish it under my name with more context. ​

I recently self-published my debut novel, Pet Purpose: Your Unspoken Voice, about a character with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) navigating love and loss. I am currently running a free promotion of the e-book on Amazon. Today, it is currently #2 in biographical fiction and #19-20 in romantic erotica categories, listed in both in Top 100 Free Best Sellers. If it ever made it to #1, I didn't check, as rankings are updated every hour.

I finally published Pet Purpose: Your Unspoken Voice. Sold a dozen copies online via Amazon from social media interest. Not a huge number, but got to start somewhere, right? Pet Purpose is a pet-themed semi-autobiographical novel with a character who is navigating love and loss with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). So a character who shares my diagnoses.

I screenshot some initial reactions/responses from 3 readers giving feedback from Twitter. Even though they tweeted publicly, I cropped out their details:

Several times in my life, I have been told that I am 'too honest'. Lying makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. Over the past few years, I have been working on an semi-autobiographical fiction book called Pet Purpose. I see it as semi-autobiographical because it is telling my story in disguise.

Originally, when I chose the title around five years ago, I intended to write memoir about my bond with pets. But more of life happened and the story has evolved into a story of courage as a young girl suffers trauma and loss, is later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and with her determination to survive, finally starts a healing journey many years later in adulthood.

The story loosely reflects my own journey, but I have changed the story-line to protect myself and others, even those who have hurt me. Changing names wasn't enough. I made the decision to write fiction, to 'lie to tell the truth', to help ease flashbacks of PTSD. So that I didn't have to remember it 'exactly' and keep re-traumatising myself. So that I minimise upsetting people. So people can't say 'that's not really what happened' (because they won't know what really happened) and minimise my message. So that I could have some distance while I still tell a personal story. So that I could express my truth in a creative way.