Through the Portal was my first attempt at writing a book. I began in 2010, when I was around 15 years of age, and self-published the book in 2012. Having experienced poor (aka, zero) sales I tried to read it again in 2013 and to my horror realized that the book was absolutely terrible.

It’s hard to say I’m completely to blame. I was just inexperienced, both in writing and in life. It was hard to see the work objectively and too easy to assume it was going to be fantastic. I hadn’t the money to get it edited properly and though friends were supportive I didn’t properly go about enlisting their help. I also incorrectly interpreted what ‘self-published’ actually meant.

But it was a learning experience. In the years since I’ve finished my higher education and gotten an adult job, and I’m back at it in earnest. I’m going to re-write the story, to create something I can be really proud of. While I plan on self-publishing again, this time I plan on taking advantage of that fact, rather than being limited by it. I’m also going to expand the story, going more depth into the villians’ perspectives: because as we all know, we are all the heroes of our own stories.