The Dream of Dalygood

The first book I ever “published” was pasted to laminated construction paper and bound in plastic rings. Before that, my stories only lived in half written diary pages and on a broken electric typewriter. Most of them were never formally finished. Some of them were pure nonsense ramblings of an over-imaginative bookworm who spent most of her time in school reading books under her desk. All of them were a joy to write.

When a school project introduced the concept of publishing my stories so that others could actually read and enjoy them, I was baffled. It had never occurred to me that someone else could engage with the words that lived in my head. It would be a bonus if they happened to enjoy those words as much as I did. It was an opportunity too good to pass up. So I took one of my ongoing characters from the half-written diary pages (a self-insert superhero named “Sharpflex” because I was, like, nine years old and that’s what you write about when you’re nine years old) and gave her a full story worthy of my elementary library’s publication. 

My words would find other homes over the years. I wrote my first “novel” on an old Toshiba laptop in the 8th grade and emailed the 35k word document about middle school cliques to two friends who were kind enough to read my first attempt at my lifelong dream. In high school, I spent every Thursday lunch period writing a one page story featuring my friends as the cast of characters in a series of misadventures known as “The Thursday Tales”. It was a thrill to witness firsthand the joy my words brought as my friends laughed over their characters’ antics and offered their own ideas on what the next week’s Thursday Tales could bring. 

Over the course of high school and college, I wrote the novel that I thought would be the defining debut work of my writing career. It was a young adult superhero romance and, blinded by naive hubris, I thought it could be the next Big Thing. It was a project that I poured my absolute heart and soul into. There were no characters I felt closer to than the characters of this story. I was convinced that the words I wrote for this book should be read by thousands if not millions of readers so I attempted to publish it through traditional publishing paths. This required diving deep into the querying trenches, spending hours crafting the perfect email that would sell my writing career to the right literary agent. It required being in the right place at the right time, making sure my tweet about the words that claimed my whole heart and soul could stand out amongst the hundreds of other authors dreaming the exact same dream as me. It required months that turned into years of editing my manuscript to the point where it was unrecognizable from its original story across countless drafts.

After over 230 rejections across multiple agents and publishers, I gave up on my dream. 

Very few people like to talk about their failure, especially authors who fail at breaking into the traditional publication market. There’s such a massive expectation in the writing and publishing community that if you can’t publish your work through one of the big book publishers, you’re never going to be a “real” author. Your words are never going to hold substance against the projects that were approved and vetted by teams of people in large publishing houses. My failure to do right by my words by failing to get them published via a traditional publisher (a failure that was repeated to me over 230 times with each rejection email) honestly triggered a massive depressive episode for me in 2015. There were other factors that contributed to this low point in my life as well, but the fact that words embedded into my DNA were deemed not good enough for anyone to read dug me into a deep void I could barely crawl out of for almost a year.   

I was lucky though. While I suffered through this period in my life, several things were going on behind the scenes. For one, self-publishing and independent publishing found legitimate ground against traditional publishing. Books published through these channels were no longer seen as vanity projects by petty authors bitter at traditional publishing but rather as just another means to publish stories for a larger audience. The tools required for indie publishing got better and more accessible too, allowing smaller presses to appear as professional if not more so than their traditional publishing counterparts that had teams of people working on a single project. 

Second, I completed my education at Hastings College. I had a rather unique educational experience as I had a clear interest in internet based content creation, but my small rural Nebraska libral arts school from 2013-2017 wasn’t quite equipped to educate students in these skills just yet. The school didn’t even have campus wide wifi until my junior year for crying out loud. As a result, I took a mix of computer programming, visual media, and marketing courses that somehow accumulated into a degree in Journalism with a minor in online visual media. It also gave me a ton of experience needed for editing, writing, creating digital art, web design, and social media marketing which are all, spoiler alert, required for independent publishing. 

Third, my personal YouTube channel “The Maddness” was doing relatively well for itself. It gave me a taste of how to manage my own business and also attracted a solid audience that seemed to stick with me despite how varied my content got. The reactions I got from my weekly YouTube videos reminded me of how much I enjoyed making content that brought people joy. Regardless if the video got 10 views or 10,000, seeing people’s reactions to my videos would invoke the same pride I felt when I wrote “The Thursday Tales” for my friends and could see that I helped brighten their day through my work. 

Emboldened by these different factors and also looking for a way to climb out of the dark void I dug myself into, I looked into self-publishing one of my stories. I’m typically writing 2-5 novels at any given time so it was just a matter of choosing which one to focus on finishing for publication. I ended up choosing a silly little young adult ghost story that I wrote mostly in the margins of my college notebooks to cheer myself up when I was bored and/or sad in class. It was light, it was fun, and, as an added bonus, I accidentally let the characters develop themselves to the point that once I put my fingers to a keyboard, they practically wrote themselves. 

I published “How to Survive a Ghost Story” in September 2018. The experience was a whirlwind of emotions and activity, but ultimately I loved every second of it. It was like I was in elementary school again, asking the librarian if anyone checked out my book to see their reaction to it. I loved writing the story, working with my beta readers to edit it for a larger audience, designing the book cover, and creating the social media marketing campaigns to promote the novel. There was such chaos to the process but it felt like I was fulfilling my soul’s calling by doing it. It was a dream come true when others read the book and actually enjoyed it.

My personal success and enjoyment with self-publishing my first novel showed me that I was capable of publishing my words on my own. I didn’t need the bigger traditional publishing companies to feel fulfilled with my writing career and dreams. I could create my own happiness by publishing my books and controlling the trajectory of my writing career all on my own. 

So, after a three year detour into corporate America (and a global pandemic), I decided to form Dalygood Media, LLC to continue self-publishing my novels under a more professional name. Publishing my books will still remain a hobby rather than a full career for a while so don’t get too excited. I’m happy enough in my current day job and enjoy the creative freedom that comes with treating writing as a hobby rather than a primary means to make money. There may be the option in the future to publish submissions from other authors or expand operations so that it can be my primary career, but for now it’s just me and my laptop working to share the words screaming in my soul with the rest of the world…..while also writing off my business expenses. There’s some tax benefits to running a business too, you know. 

The goal for this company and my work is to continue publishing works that are fun to read, fun to write, and stay true to the heart of the stories being told. Some stories are going to be weird. Some are going to be sad. Some are going to be a blend of several different things. As long as someone out there reads my words and lets the words reach them in whatever way they need to be reached, I’m considering this company a success. More importantly, as long as I’m still having fun with it, Dalygood Media, LLC is going to stick around so that it can continue to provide joy to whoever needs it. If that means just me, then that’s fine too.