Initial Reactions

Initial Reactions I Have Gotten After The Publication

Initial Reactions and Responses

    Since my publication of To Love Perfectly and returning to campus for my sophmore year of college I have shared with many of my friends and peers that I have published a book and some have read it or began reading it. Also, some have been curious about it as well so I will do my best to answer some of the questions I have been repeatedly asked.

Why do the characters feel familiar?

    This is one I got right off the bat from one of my friends who purchased it and began reading it. To him it seemed that some of the characters were based off of people we know. There are only two characters that are explicitly based off of real people; Gramps and Aristotle. Gramps is based off of Gramps formally known as Joseph Uzelac and Aristotle whose fictional name in the book is Mike Curran is based off of Michael Messing who I would call Aristotle because he was pretty was with his advice. So in order to pay homage to him I created a character off of him. All the other characters may share personalities and aspects to known people but that's primarily because I designed them to be realistic and human. They are archetypes and the focus of the story shouldn't be who is based off of who rather the main thesis of it is: What is love and how do you obtain perfect love through imperfect love. 

Can you give me a free copy?

    Many, many and I mean many of my friends have asked me this. The short answer is no. I'm not giving a free copy. I am trying to make money there is an affordable version that is paperback and $15. I'm not charging a fortune for it and I have the paperback as an affordable option. I have many friends who do their own business and if I was to use them for their service I would pay them. This is a business and I'm trying to make some money. I'm not charging absurd prices. If you want to read my book you can buy it.

What is it about?

    The title of the books sums it up perfectly. To Love Perfectly. It does this through its thesis which is based off of a conversation I had with my Philosophy of Human Nature Professor Mr. Mike Brown after getting ice cream with him about how in order to have perfect love you have to have imperfect love. I decided after that conversation to start writing my book. I didn't want to write a didactic philosophy book since there are plenty of them already out there. I decided I would explore the various themes of love and imperfect love in its infancy ordered toward perfect love through story telling. So it goes through the spiritual, emotional pilgrimage of Sebestien as he learns to find what it means to love perfectly

How did you get it published?

    I self-published through Barnes and Noble. It costed nothing I just don't get as much marketing and I'm responsible for paying for or doing my own marketing. It was a pretty easy process getting a vendor license and ISBN code. The only hard part was doing the cover art and formatting a PDF to be as precise as possible.

Will you make an e-book?

    For now, I will not. I personally don't believe books should be digital. I'm a firm believer in physical media. Literature is not the same when it is not physical media. Although I wouldn't mind once I make more sales doing an E-book and narrating it. I'd like to also get others involved as a voice cast to play the other characters in the book. Also, I'd probably try making a CD to listen to.

Is there going to be a sequel?

    This is one I have been asked a fair bit. I'm not going to make a sequel for Sebestien or any of the other characters in the book. I've toyed with the idea of maybe exploring events I did not fully explore since I set myself to a limit of 14 chapters to mirror the number of the stations of the cross. Like it would be interesting to explore some of the time between the time jumps I did. I just didn't explore them then since it did not seem necessary and I did everything out of necessity in the book. I also thought about maybe writing a book more from Theresa's perfective, but I think I write enough from her perspective in the book since I did everything out of necessity. If I make a "special edition" version or something, I'll maybe include more. But no there will not be a "To Love Perfectly 2" 

Concluding Thoughts

    I'm glad that some word has been getting out about it and some of my friends have said they will or might purchase it which I appreciate. I just figured I'd answer some of these questions since they have been popping up.