How to Get Published is a continuing feature at The Book Bin where we ask authors to tell us their publishing stories. Was it a rocky road or did it come easy for them? Did they start with an agent and get a NY publisher interested in their book or did they self-publish? What words of wisdom do they have for all of us who would like to be published one day?
Today’s guest is Robert Nelson, author of the urban thriller, Real Eyez Realize Real Liez (CreateSpace).
In late 2008 I landed myself a stay in the ever-so-luxurious NC Department of Corrections. Amongst the chaos, stress and angst of Prison Life, I dove into the pages of my various notebooks as a way to vent. I started with poetry and particular song lyrics that I scribbled according to the rhythms bouncing around inside my noggin. I sent most of it home and my family and friends seemed impressed enough to start passing it around. Surprisingly, this accidentally developed my first inner ripples of an actual ring of fans.
I continued the best I could despite the interruptions of the Correctional Staff I continued to right as vigorously and as controversially as possible. See, C.O.’s have a free range policy on routinely trashing anything, literature or otherwise, that they might deem harmful to an inmate or other inmates. Which means, after I let the wrong people glance over my work my cell was invaded and all the notes and scribbles any other author concur as essential were confiscated. This happened repeatedly over the next 14 months. Write, trash, write, trash, until eventually I knew the story so well that I could commit it to memory until I could transfer to a camp more conducive to my creative processes.
After which, I cranked out the rough draft of Real Eyez Realize Real Liez in a blissful 31 day spree. Of course I was criticized by my peers and my Spades partners for sitting stone still hovering over a table amidst the monotonous whirlwind daily prison activities. As the pens drained and pages turned I filled my notebooks until my release in 2010.
Over the next year I worked 11 hours a day, went to school for 4 hours every night, fell in love, partied like a madman, and sat hovering over my illuminated keyboard until the first installment of the Real Eyez Realize Real Liez Trilogy was birthed and self-published through Createspace.com. It wasn’t easy, but through endless trial and error and dedication I’m currently a vendor of record with Barnes&Noble.com, Createspace.com and Amazon.com. The hardest part I found was getting the cover absolutely 100% perfect while there is a week long wait in between ordering drafts from Createspace.com. Though thankfully, they installed an auto-option so you don’t need approval to order a draft. Or maybe it was the sheer number of drafts I had been ordering. The rest of the actual self-publishing process was a breeze and seemed to fall into place naturally once you rifled through the BS and started talking to people who could actually help you. So the best advice I could give is to either A.) find a worthwhile agent FIRST… or to never settle for less in the self-publishing industry. There is always a better offer or an easier way to do things right around the corner.
In closure, the grabbing appeal of Real Eyez Realize Real Liez is not only the struggle and strife I went through to bring it out of the fences to the real world and publish it, but the lessons I learned during the writing itself. Through my tutelage underneath the Aryan Brotherhood and the thousands of hours of eavesdropped Gang Knowledge I absorbed; I entered Real Eyez into a state of realism unheard of in modern day Urban Literature. With my pen, I intend to grab the reader by the scruff and bash their face into the ugliness of the modern day underworld. Then through the tribulation and transformation of my characters, Real Eyez actually teaches the reader HOW to defeat the spread of the Gangsta Lifestyle into Suburban America. The lessons are there; all the while shrouded in a veil of gunfights, conspiracy, blood money and the cocky smart-ass humor I’m so infamous for. Endless respect to all my fans and for The Book Bin for letting me share this with you all.
Robert Nelson was born and raised in Garner, North Carolina where he earned the connections and street credibility needed to bring a sense of authenticity to his work. Consequentially, this lead to his stay in the luxurious NC-DOC where through a lot of retrospection he developed a strategy to defeat what he had become. Through the guidance of the Aryan Brotherhood and the variety of other hardened criminals he played cards with he focused his energy into developing his skills as a writer to keep the youth from making the same mistakes he did. If he can open just one pair of eyes through his writing, everything he’s put into these pages would have paid off.





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