it's here - the sequel I never thought I'd write to the book I never meant to publish!

'Lovers of Doubt' - the sequel to my global best-selling and award winning book, 'Loving Your Doubt' has now been released into the wild!

(and in keeping with how I release my books to date, there's no official launch party, special promotional discounts, or similar - you'll either want to get a copy, or not; and I'd rather you get it when it suits you rather than playing to my ego of making lots of sales in the first week).

Why a sequel and not a second edition?

Most non-fiction books out there that seem to prove popular and keep generating sales (as Loving Your Doubt seems to be - still making regular sales in different countries 4 years after it was first published) tend to get refreshed every so often: the author updates some of the references and expands on the ideas based on feedback that they've had from readers.

As Lovers of Doubt relates to the original themes of imposter syndrome that my first book explored, then surely it would be sensible to expand and update that as a 2nd edition, as that's what usually happens, right? But as some who know me may suspect, I've never been one to do things based on usual practice or accepted wisdom...

However, in all honesty, I did try and re-visit the original manuscript to Loving Your Doubt to draw on the feedback and unexpected outcomes that started to be shared back with me by readers of it. But after struggling with it for nearly a year, it struck me that I needed a better way of telling these new stories that I'd started to collect.

Cue Jessica Andersen who, in a moment of serendipity was in conversation with me when I shared how I was struggling to recreate the original book to accommodate these new stories and wider perspectives, asked me a simple question of "why not do it as a sequel instead?". Suddenly, the writing got easier and it all started to flow more easily (or as easily as it can do, based on how I approach my writing of books).

Do you have to have read the original book to understand the sequel?

In drafting this sequel I was concerned that people may pick this up 'out of order' - I'm aware that copies of the original Loving Your Doubt are being passed between people, so this may happen with this book too.

So I've added a 'previously...' chapter that summarises the core ideas and arguments of that first book to help new readers better orientate themselves. And as this sequel's starting point is how other people are thinking about how they tame their own imposters, it feels like it works well as a stand-alone as my first book's starting point was wondering why I didn't agree with what everyone was saying about imposter syndrome.

Does my mankini feature in this book, just as it did in the first one? 

Yes. But there are still no pictures, so the risk of your going blind is very low to non-existent.

Is there an index?

I've always been open about the things I realise I missed when self-publishing Loving Your Doubt as my first book - including it taking 4 years to arrange an index for it.

This time round I added various checklists for myself, so I can create all new moments of things I wished I'd spotted before telling the printers to push the button on their presses...

 

So please feel free to check out it's listing at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HRDWMTMQ/?th=1 and enjoy the preview sample; and if you do decide to invest in a copy, let me know what you make of it either by leaving a review or DM.