You might be thinking by now, "This woman has written a lot of books!" That's true, because I love it. Self-publishing is both a blessing and a curse to modern writing. It's a blessing for authors who are willing to do the work that publication requires. They can write and share their stories without the gatekeepers who once passed judgment on what would and would not be offered to the public.

At a conference once, I heard an agent explain that there were times when she had thirty excellent manuscripts on her desk, all worthy of publication. She had to choose one. Agents won't tell you that. They simply send a canned "This isn't for me" message or just delete your query. Self-publishing allows a writer to bypass that process and offer their work directly to the reading public. That's a blessing.

The curse comes in two forms. First, people who are in no way ready to publish do so, which gives self-publishing a bad name. I used to do workshops for writers, and often I had people come up to me at break time to say they'd rushed to publish a book and then found out it was bad. That's why many savvy readers still prefer to trust the big publishing houses to provide books with strong plot lines, well-developed characters, and few if any errors. That's good, though these days the big guys cling to their profits by publishing the same authors (and often the same stories) over and over. The other side of the curse of self-publishing is that sheer numbers prevent good writing from being seen and good writers from being recognized. With over 11,000 new books being published every DAY, you might be the greatest writer ever and still never get recognized.

With that said, I self-publish twice a year, once as Peg Herring and once as Maggie Pill. This is one of Peg's earliest self-pubbed books.

Somebody Doesn't Like Sarah Leigh is a small-town story of two women who were once best friends. Something happened, and Sarah turned against Caroline. After a public scene between the two, Sarah disappears, and the police wonder if Caroline did something to her ex-best friend. To save herself from arrest, Caroline must prove that while she doesn't like Sarah Leigh anymore, she did not do away with her.

This book is available here for $2.99