Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Announcing.... "Anna's Tears"

May I have a drum roll please? Rat tat tat... Announcing name of my debut novel, for those who missed it: "Anna's Tears".   Now should a very large publisher, with a boat load of cash, want to change the title… well I'd be open to suggestions!

I know some of you are thinking – “OMG, she’d sell out. She’d give up her creative for cash – what a terrible thing!”

We darlings, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this is business after all. As we all know, from the book publisher’s perspective, publishing has A LOT to do with making money. I struggled for years trying to reconcile spirituality and money. And, much to my surprise, I found out that they are not incompatible.

This all came to a head when I toyed with the idea of teaching yoga for a living. I had been a student of yoga for over ten years and had experienced much healing from it and wanted to share it with others. But I still needed to have an income. I wondered, “How can I possibly teach yoga for a living and yet take money for it?” Somehow, it seemed wrong. It was okay for me to exchange my office skills and ability to navigate in “cubicle land” for money, but when it came to yoga, in my mind, the rules changed.

After lots of reading and journaling on the topic, I came to realize that money wasn’t the problem, it was my perception of it that was. Money is just energy. Like everything, it can be used for good, or not. It can help a person, or not. Whether it is derived from office work or from my creative or spiritual, doesn’t really matter to the Universe.

I came to realize that I was just exchanging my energy – my knowledge of yoga – for my student’s energy, which happened to take the form of money. We were just bartering; simply exchanging something for something else. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now back to “Anna’s Tears”. In the end, it’s not the title of the book that matters, it’s the contents.

I want to get the book into people’s hands and have them experience Anna’s and the other character’s tragedies and victories. I want them to shed tears and rejoice along with me. I want them to be moved to be better people; to know they have the strength within to overcome the misery that life throws at them; to be inspired. And if none of that, to at least give them an escape from their day to day lives.

So, when a publisher decides to take on my book, God willing, and if they think they can sell more copies with a different title, well, then that’s what I’ll do! 

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