By Alicia Ortiz Alba
We are excited to highlight Katelyn Simeone, a junior at Roger Williams University who has recently become a self-published author!
Katelyn began drafting her book, Love You Tomorrow when she was seventeen. By the end of her first year in college, when she was halfway done, she began looking for publishers. “A lot of the publishers I was connecting with wanted to take over my book and simply slap my name on the cover,” Katelyn writes. “I was only eighteen at the time, but I knew my potential, and I did not want to be disrespected by any publishing company.” After going through several publishing companies, Katelyn connected with a local company in Rhode Island, Stillwater River Publications, and was able to get complete control of her book. “I paid Stillwater just under $2,000 and retained all of the royalties, so the book is entirely mine.”
Love You Tomorrow is Katelyn’s pride and joy. She looks at her work and sees something that truly belongs to her. She had the opportunity to pick out what the cover would look like, handpick every chapter name, and read the book many times to make sure every word and description was exactly where she wanted it to be. “Being able to say that this book is entirely my creation is something I will hold dear to my heart forever.”
Katelyn’s journey to becoming a self-published author serves to remind young aspiring writers that anything is possible. Her advice to new writers is that “you never want the work you are doing to feel like a task. If your heart is not behind your writing, your audience will see that, and neither you nor the reader will benefit. Make sure that everything you write is for you. Writing creatively is supposed to be fun!”
For those who wish to know more about the book, here is a synopsis: Love You Tomorrow is a romantic mystery. The main character, Adelynn, wakes up from a coma and is told that she was in a car accident. She spends her days trying to recover from the accident when she starts to notice strange behavior from the hospital staff and her stepmother. Adelynn begins having dreams where she meets a boy with no name that helps her take the right steps to find out what actually happened to her by the end of the book.
Love You Tomorrow by Katelyn Simeone can be purchased on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble online. The book can also be found on Katelyn’s website: https://katelynwrites25.square.site/. Ordering via her website gives readers the choice to have the book signed and receive a free bookmark alongside their copy.
We congratulate Katelyn on this significant accomplishment, and we wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors!