Introduction

Day 1 of the 30 Day Gratitude Challenge for November

My name is Alexandria Miller, but I generally go by Alex. I'm a nurse (med/surg and ICU cross-trained) and an indie author. I'm a wife and mom and I've always been an avid reader, even when such a busy life means most of my book consumption happens via audiobook.

I decided to start this blogging journey, I would start with a 30 day gratitude challenge I saw on Instagram (naturally, starting a day late because I worked on the first and didn't see the post until today). Some day, I'll probably do 2 prompts in one to catch up.

The first prompt I decided to use was something I'm proud of, because it'll help introduce myself and why I even have a website and blog. One thing I'm proud of, is having the courage to self-publish my book, Secrets Off The Ice.

I started Secrets as my 2021 NaNoWriMo project. I never won NaNo, but it at least helped give me a start to a few stories. I was able to finish Secrets for the first time in 2022 and at the time, it was in the FMC's POV. If you've read Secrets, you know that it ended up in the MMC's POV in the end. I rewrote a large part of it in 2022 to change POVs because I read a craft book and had a realization. "The main character should be the one with the most to lose" I believe was the sentence and Hudson definitely has the most to lose.

After more reworking, I did query Secrets, with largely no response. After about 6 months, I decided to put it away and didn't take it out again until the second half of 2023. In the meantime, I moved, started a new job, got pregnant, and had my daughter. Check out the rest of the website to find some pics that include my daughter (as an infant and later a toddler) and one of my cats attempting to help me write.

I actually didn't pull it out until after I was trying to write another book. I had a tendency to start thinking about it once I was writing anything because I loved the plot so much.

I did a round of edits by myself followed by a round of edits and working through it with my mom and a coworker of mine. It was at this point that I started to feel more seriously about needing to do SOMETHING with Secrets or I was never going to get another book written. Self-publishing would prevent me from being able to tinker with it.

I did have to push back my dates from December of 2025 to February of 2026 as the holiday season, work, and life in general got so crazy that I hadn't finished the final edits and formatting. That also means I didn't really get much out there for advertising ahead of time or any kind of ARCs when I could barely finish in time for getting it out in general.

In my mind, I didn't have high hopes for Secrets. I felt like I was more publishing it for myself as much as it'd be cool to self-publish and have it get found by an agent who loves it or something. I remember telling my mom in the week before it came out, that my conservative goal was to sell 20 books. That's it. My optimistic goal, was to sell 100 copies within the first year. I hit over 100 copies in the first 2 months. In 7 months, I hit 200 copies. Now, 9 months out, I'm over 250 copies sold (by all websites and in all formats) which feels crazy.

After a couple months and quite a few people telling me that they don't have time to read physical books, but they'd love an audiobook, I decided to post it on ACX for auditions. One audition I got was from Matt Malone, a country music broadcaster in Indianna. He's originally from the midwest so he didn't have an extreme accent which I felt was necessary for a book taking place in northern Minnesota. In July, I released the audiobook on Audible. I can't wait for more people to start listening to it, because I loved his narration so much. As I was listening through it before publication, there were times I'd be folding laundry and laugh at a quote. That I wrote!? You know I was into it if I forgot I wrote it.

As of the beginning of November 2026, I have done 4 events with 2 more before the end of the year. One is at another bookstore (3 of my events thus far have been with indie bookstores) and one is a holiday expo in my hometown that has over 1000 people go through it during the course of the day. Very different settings only a few weeks apart to see how many more sales I can get before Christmas (and my 30th birthday)!

I'm so grateful to have had the courage to release this book, start learning to advertise (including making a Tiktok), and opting to do events to make sure it got out more locally. I contacted so many indie bookstores and have it in at least 7 that are within a couple hours of me. I'm very much an introvert, so so many of these things have been internally painful and anxiety inducing. Now, in addition to trying to make tiktoks and be an active participant in this crazy thing we call life, I'm working on my next book. The one I'm currently working on is an adult romance and definitely higher spice level than Secrets was (after all, Secrets is about high school seniors, we don't need to see spice when they story is so much more about their growth as people).