Sarah Gilliland is the author of new book "Perfect Day Alabama."
Q: Tell us about where you live and what you do.
A: Hello, my name is Sarah Gilliland and I live in the Inverness area right off of Highway 280. And, by day, I am a travel writer and a chauffeur to my three kids who are actively involved in Hoover City Schools.
Q: Tell us about your book.
A: So, my book is called "Perfect Day Alabama." The premise of the book is what if you only had 24 hours to spend in one of the great cities that I list in my book. What would you do? Where would you go? What would you eat? So, my book aims to answer those questions for folks, and I have featured 29 different cities throughout the state. Yeah, I couldn't list every single place, otherwise the book would be humongous. But, I did my best to pick some big cities, small cities, some off the beaten path things, some popular things that locals may or may not know about and definitely people who've never been here will not know about. So, I really wanted to highlight everything great that is related to the state of Alabama, and I have two featured listings for every city and then four alternatives so that people have a lot to choose from when it comes to picking their Alabama itinerary.
Q: How did you start writing?
A: Well, I started writing a long time ago. I have 13 year old twin girls. I started writing a blog when they were like six or seven months old. I just felt like I needed a creative outlet to express myself; share my stories, share about them and how they were changing growing up, and slowly that writing evolved into something more. It evolved into lots of different things for a while before I really settled on travel writing a couple of years ago, and I've just been writing about travel ever since.
Q: What advice would you give someone who is interested in publishing a book?
A: If you want to publish a book, you need to know that it is a lot of work, especially if it is a nonfiction book and especially if it's about a state or a city. Really, it doesn't even have to be anything big. It can be about something small, but there are people who are very passionate about it and will probably want to correct you on all the things. And, even if you're writing a nonfiction book, people will want to change it and make it what they want it to be instead of your story. So, just know that whatever you do, you've got to stick with it and know that there's always going to be detractors, but don't let that keep you from pursuing your dreams.
I would definitely recommend working with a publisher instead of self-publishing. There are a lot of advantages to having a publisher who will help you promote yourself and your book. If you self publish, you have to do all the promoting yourself, and then it feels like you've put in a lot of work and not seen a lot of results. And, I know for me, having someone at my back to help get the word out about my book and get it into bookstores, big and small, and to also help me find places to talk about my book and myself, which is hard to do. It's really nice to just be able to have that in your back pocket so that, you know, you're being supported in that way.Self-publishing is just incredibly hard, so I wouldn't recommend it just because I know myself.
Also, if you are going to write your own book and you want to pitch it to someone, make sure you have enough of your book to pitch so that they can see the future in the story, especially if you're writing something fiction. If it's nonfiction, you have a little bit more leeway to just summarize, but that's my best advice for those who want to publish a book.
