Interview with Lynette Bacon-Nguyen

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer, I just started writing things. I have a heavy background in roleplaying games both tabletop and text base, and I consumed a ton of media including fanfiction so I started writing my own. I wrote a door stopper of a fanfiction (500k+ words) over a period of about three years and decided then I wanted to do some original work.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I have a distinctive cadence when I write apparently which is similar to how I speak. I also will often diegetically cut off either dialogues or stream of thoughts in a story by new action in a scene or people talking over each other because that’s much more realistic to my view of the world.

Where did you get your information or idea for your book?

I was part of a freeform roleplaying community on discord that ran a continuous storyline for about three years and I had one character to whom I was very attached. It helped that the way she was set up was that she was actually very experienced and had numerous stories and adventures already that I would make up on the spot for roleplay. I decided essentially to build a series and world around those adventures by making a new setting where she could live and exist. 

How did you get your book published?

To maintain complete creative control, I’m self-publishing my book, and the process of actual publishing isn’t hard. If you write something it’s fairly easy to just make an account on Amazon KDP and publish your own.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your book?

Just how expensive the entire process was. Publishing a manuscript on Amazon doesn’t really cost anything besides a cut of the process but there is a laundry list of things you just have to pay for that were much more costly than I expected. You have to buy book art (which I don’t regret because my cover is AMAZING), I actually spent about six hundred dollars on just art for my book, which included the cover, a map of the city that’s at the front of the book and commissioned art of the races. You have to pay editors, and there are different kinds. I paid for a developmental edit, and package line edit/grammar edit which ended up being about 1100 USD. Then of course advertising which is so far, I’ve dropped about two hundred dollars on and likely will be paying a bit more in the future. I’m planning on scheduling booth events at conventions when my book officially comes out, which tables there can cost anywhere from 50-500 USD depending on how big the event is plus I have to buy promotional materials, banners, bookmark printings, as well as a stack of printed copies of the paperback to sell. It’s all very involved, but it’s money I’m willing to give for the success of my project because it’s cheap to publish a book on Amazon, anyone could do it if they wanted to try. But it’s expensive to make sure that the book is well-edited, has good cover art and is advertised enough so people will even know to buy it.

Book Title: Adventurer’s Overture

Author Name: Lynette Bacon-Nguyen

Pub Date: October 28th, 2022

ISBN: Amazon Kindle Published ISBN

Book Category/Genre: YA Fantasy

Page Count: 356

Publisher: Self Published

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Author Bio:

My name is Lyn, I live in Georgia. I love all forms of media, kayaking, rock climbing and tabletop roleplay with my friends.