Twenty Before Forty

I was about seventeen years old when I realized that life was pretty fucking futile.

At the time I was majoring in Creative Writing at an arts school in Cincinnati, working two jobs (one of which was Panera — boo, Panera) and spending more than I was making. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved writing since I was little. I’d spent most of junior year competing in poetry slams around the city and had even been crowned runner-up teen youth poet laureate! But every break I’d have at Panera, I’d eat a sandwich and my greatest hope was that my manager would comp the meal so I wouldn’t have to pay for it.

…That’s what I looked forward to?

Yeah. I know.

On one of these terribly sad breaks, I didn’t eat a sandwich. I sat down with my laptop and started combing through my Google Docs — see, at the end of senior year, you lose your school email, and all those stories I’d written in my arts school and even before then would just poof into nothingness if I didn’t do something about it. And so, you say, “Carmen. What did you do?”

Well, that’s a fantastic question, dear reader.

Two weeks later I quit Panera and July 19 of this year, my first book A Thousand Moons Gone will be available for purchase via IngramSpark for the low, low, price of $14.99.

So let’s back it up.

How did I get from a million and seventeen Google Docs to self-publishing before I hit my freshman year of college?

The answer there is pretty simple. If I were you, I’d find out.