Because self-publishing is so straightforward on Amazon, I decided to get my old/new novel Maui Daze in front of audiences. But the novel requires some background.
I began writing it in 2009, not long after I had left Maui following six years there, much of the time spent as Editor of the weekly newspaper MauiTime. Still struggling following the death of my father two years prior, I had moved to the Sacramento area in hopes of covering state government. But work had not been as easily to come by as I’d hoped, and in my spare time I started writing what I thought of as a fun, comedic novel loosely based on my early years working as a journalist on Maui.
I had never worked at a newspaper in a small town before that. The mechanic who worked on my truck knew my writing. I often discussed current events — local and national — with bartenders while I ate dinner. When I had to get title paperwork done at the DMV, the woman working there recognized my name.
At first writing the novel was easy, therapeutic even, and the pages flew by. The characters breathed and swore and cried just like I wanted, and I was confident I would finish before the end of the year. But about 150 pages in, I stopped. At first I told myself I just needed a break from writing on it every day. But after I week I realized I had no idea how to finish it, and no desire to look at it anymore.
I’d found a job at a think tank covering state officials, and I put the novel aside. A year went by. I eventually returned to Maui, took up my old job just as though I’d never left, and stayed another seven years. Then I left again, in the spring of 2018, this time for Southern California. Finding journalistic work was again difficult, but I made due, until March 2020, when the entire world shut down for COVID-19.
Needing something to fill the days at home, I searched through old files on my laptop until I found the unfinished novel. I had only re-read a few chapters when I instantly realized how to end it, and then took off running. It took me a couple months to complete, and then, armed with the latest copy of the Writer’s Market that I could find, I began querying agents. Day after day, I went through the Market alphabetically, sending pitch letters and sample pages to agencies that seemed to be looking for what I had written. When my query count exceeded 70, with absolutely nothing positive to show for it, I gave up. I closed the files on the novel yet again.
The pandemic eventually subsided, and once again I went back to a newsroom. Every now and then I thought of the novel, and wondered if I’d ever get to publish it. Then August 8, 2023 happened. Lahaina, the town where I’d worked and lived for the first years of my time on Maui, a place I loved so deeply I made it the setting for this book, was destroyed in a deadly wildfire that also killed about a hundred residents, two of whom I’d known personally.
At first, I figured the novel was now unpublishable. Who would want to read to a comedy set in 2005 Lahaina, about two decades before the entire place was destroyed in a tragic wildfire? I thought of changing the novel’s setting, but this is a story about Lahaina as much as it’s about people who work at small town newspapers.
Still, I could not put it aside completely. I loved writing this book. The effort I put into it was in good faith. So I decided to self-publish it. Though I proofed every page shortly before I hit publish, the plot, setting, time period and characters are all as they were when I first finished the book.
You can buy a paperback version of the book here for $10.99.
You can buy the e-book version here for $.99.
This post is adapted from the book’s preface.
Anthony Pignataro 