A Conundrum

I've picked up on a trend around these parts: mention the word "vagina", and lose a follower. The last two posts featuring the word "vagina" therein have each cost me a follower, and that really amuses me.

However, I'm going to refrain from firing off fifty-eight vaginae in a row. Mostly because I have work to do in the lab this afternoon, and I need as much bloodflow around my brain as possible.

See what I did there? That's a boner joke!

Anyway, as you may or may not have picked up on, I'm yet another one of those bloggers who is also an unpublished author, just working my way through my next manuscript. I'd continue on, but that seems to be de rigueur for bloggers, so I don't feel the need to rehash the notion. I'm just...you know...waiting for that first big break! *thumbs up*

But, what's that? A light, at the end of the tunnel? Or, more like, a tiny pinprick of light shining in the overwhelming and overarching dome of darkness hovering over my would-be authorial world?

It seems as though local pay-as-you-go self-publisher Lulu.com has offered up the chance to publish a book--for free! the offer, according to the newspaper article I read yesterday, is good until March 25th. I don't know if it's just for local authors (they are local to Morrisville, NC, which is a suburb of Raleigh), so if you're interested, check it out.

Here's the thing: I have a book that I could publish through them (actually, I have a couple of books that could go). My wife has even demanded kindly offered to help with cover design. Everything sounds good to go, right? So, then, where's the rub?

I'm not sure. I don't know if this is just one book that they'll publish, or if it means they'll publish it, and then I can sell and distribute through there. I'm thinking it's probably just a "here's the book", and they mail it to me and I get a fleeting feeling of self-satisfaction ("I'm an author!"), and then it sits on my shelf and collects dust until I get pissed at myself for doing it and throw the book either in the garbage, or in a plastic bin and leave it to molder in my out-building.

I've contemplated doing this before. I have a book that's roughly 55,000 words which I could easily expand to 80,000+ (right after I knock out a rather extraneous sexual scene *whistles innocently*) and change a few character names. As much as I like to knock NaNoWriMo, this is a book I actually wrote during my initial torrid November writing experience. Frankly, I'm actually kind of proud of the story and happy with how it turned out--not to say it wouldn't need some retweaking (see "extraneous sexual scene" from above).

It's just...I don't know. It would provide me with that first foray into the writing and publishing world. It would be something that I can fall back on in query letters whilst trying to find an agent for my other stories that I'll soon be pimping out again (current work-in-progress? It will be done this month.).

But, still. There's this nifty little dystopian time-travel story that I really like which could--maybe--get my foot in the door. And, there's a chance I can get the first book done for free--especially if I continue riding the wave of writing momentum that I've generated and finish up my Greek myth and then flesh out the missing parts of the story that I would focus on to fill the 80,000 word quota.

And yet, I hesitate. It sounds like a really good deal, right? Too good, in fact. And my mama...well, she didn't really teach me much of anything. But, I've always heard that, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And this whole thing is sounding just a bit too good to be true.