The artistic control / freedom of an indie author is a beautiful gift, if used correctly.

That said, it’s important to use it rightly. If you aren’t open to learning from editors and beta readers and such, you’re in trouble as an indie.

If you aren’t able to sit back and objectively ask, “Ok, is this advice helpful in accomplishing my vision? Even just in part?” you are done for.

The ego has to go. As an indie, there is no one to MAKE you kill your artistic ego. That’s a danger and a pitfall. You can’t let it hurt you or eat at you or make you resentful or depressed.

You take bad reviews or critical feedback personally, and you have no artistic future. You just don’t. That’s a fact.

But if you can be open to advice from well-meaning and insightful people, the artistic license of an independent artist is WONDERFUL.

I chose not to seek traditional representation because I feared, and refused, to have people who only cared about money rip apart my vision for Herezoth. I wouldn’t let them destroy the heart and soul of my story with anything like forced DEI or sensitivity readers.

Anyone who wants to write a story grounded in diversity, preaching the slogans of the day, is welcome to do so. But that is not my story. A writer who wants to use sensitivity readers and take their input to heart is free to do that. I have no interest in it.

Herezoth is an island nation and more or less ethnically homogenous. Traigland, which is introduced in book two, is the same (though in a different way). That’s how islands generally work.

What those respective ethnicities look like racially really doesn’t matter. People’s looks do not determine what their culture is, what they believe, or what values they hold. Their choices and upbringings determine that. Skin color has nothing to do with it. And seeing Herezoth and Traigland are completely fictional, you could make the people of either kingdom look more or less like this or that group in reality. It’s all relative. It doesn’t have any real bearing upon anything.

I suppose I envisioned people from Herezoth looking more or less like me and my family because that’s what I’m familiar with. There’s nothing wrong with that. If I had chosen to make them look different, there would be equally nothing wrong with that. But my characters are who they are. They came into my mind pretty much fully developed already–personality, situation, looks, and names. I wasn’t changing who they are after 12 years with them.

I feared a publishing house would try to force ethnic diversity into a story in which it doesn’t fit, given Herezoth is an island.

That would compromise suspension of disbelief, to my mind. Suspension of disbelief is critical to a good story. More than anything, I want to tell good stories.

I also refused to compromise the values my story naturally flows from and is imbued with.

So, I chose to go indie. This allowed me to keep my story genuinely mine. Herezoth is for everyone, I always say. The human adventure–family, siblings, learning what love means and doesn’t mean, grappling with faith or lack thereof, struggling with forgiveness and to offer mercy–these are human questions and themes EVERYONE confronts.

They are front and center in Herezoth, amidst lots of action and adventure. Story is king, but these things are the atmosphere in which the story breathes. I couldn’t possibly change the atmosphere, even if I purposely avoid trying to “preach” my worldview in my fiction (and I do avoid that). I sensed there was a real possibility an agent or publishing house would want me to align more with the zeitgeist, for the sake of making more sales.

So, that’s why I went indie. I have enjoyed the process and don’t regret the choices I made at all.