Local Author and Mother of Six Writes and Publishes Debut Novel

Alton, Illinois, October 30, 2011 - Writing a book is hard work, but try writing and publishing a book with the demands of being a wife and a mother of six. What seems like an impossibility for most has become an actuality for Alton resident, Shimeka Anderson who not only wrote her first novel entitled Skeletons, but also self-published it under her own publishing company, Six Kids & A Pen Publishing.

With the odds of getting a book deal with one of the big six publishing houses can be just as probable  as hitting the Lottery so many authors are self-publishing their works.  Self-publishing was once frowned upon by those in the literary world; however, with the advent of electronic reading devices such as the Kindle, iPad and Nook, an endless amount of information and resources on the internet and desktop publishing programs such as Adobe inDesign and Quark XPress, many newbie as well as veteran authors are choosing to have more control over their literary career by going the independent route.

With Indy publishing an author controls not only the look and content of their book, but they also have control over the pricing  and printing.  Unfortunately the one thing that they cannot control are sales.  Self-publishing has taken hits because many authors have put out books that do not compete with books that are traditionally published. No matter how good a story that an author has does not make up for poorly edited content and a lack luster cover design. These fatal mistakes are the reason that self-published authors were not being taken seriously. 

With the success stories of Vickie Stringer of Triple Crown Publishing who self-published her first book, Let That Be The Reason, shortly after being released from prison which sold over 100,000 copies. Twenty-seven-year-old Amanda Hocking began self-publishing her paranormal romance novels as e-books in 2010 and by March 2011 she had sold over a million copies and has earned two million dollars from sales and has most recently signed a deal with a major publishing house.

Shimeka has been writing since she was very young, but she never dreamed of being an author as a career path and wrote  mainly  for  relaxation. Six years ago she wrote the first lines to her soon-to-be-release book, Skeletons, and allowed a friend to read it. The friend loved it and told her that she should continue to write and try to get published. After querying over forty-five literary agents she would often receive rejection letters. “Most of the time I was being rejected because my book didn't’t fit the genre that the agent represented.” She said, “Some agents wanted me to write either urban fiction that dealt with thugs, drugs and killing while others wanted a romance book. I don’t live a street life and while I am married, with six children romance is one of the last things that we have time for.” Instead she wrote a story that mixed the urban vibe of Eric Jerome Dickey with the suspense of Jackie Collins.

Born and raised in Alton, Illinois where she currently resides with her husband and six children, hence the name Six Kids & A Pen Publishing. Shimeka is currently employed at Magellan Health Services in Earth City, Missouri. She would like for people to know that thorough hard work and determination they can see their dreams become a reality and that sometimes taking the road less traveled can still get them to their destination. Skeletons is available on Kindle, Nook as well as in paperback on Amazon.com.

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