Roland MacInnis

I grew up on the island of Cape Breton in the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The small rural community of Point Edward had some 200 years of history before I came along. Whenever two or more of my relatives gathered, stories came to life. The best storytellers were highly entertaining and spoke with the dialects, speech patterns, [impediments included] and other characteristics of the people they were describing. The ability of storytellers to entertain people with words impressed me greatly. Here was a craft and a set of skills I was determined to learn.

When I decided to wind down my business consulting practice, I examined my life goals and writing was at the top of my list. When I did some research on traditional book publication, marketing and sales, the long lead times and the arduous processes involved were discouraging. Putting myself in the hands of people I didn't know, and had little or no control over, was another factor in favor of independent authoring. Mostly, I just wanted to write but I also realized that writing is for readers and so it is important to publish. Being an indie writer poses many challenges because you are performing without a net. It is a "do-it-yourself "process with a lot of technology to master on top of the usual requirements of written work. The good news is that sites such as Smashwords do their best to guide and explain things to the beginning author.