A Turning Point Decision

I finished my first novel, Imagine When, in January. I have been shopping it around to different publishers with no knowledge of what I was doing. I sent it to some vanity publishers, without knowing it. Vanity publishing is basically what you would call it when you want to publish a book for the bragging rights and to be able to share it with your family and friends. The problem with this is that the publishing company doesn't do any real marketing for you, and you could be expected to pay for your own editing, cover art, and marketing. It is essentially a way for these publishing companies to make money at the expense of new authors. They could theoretically get your book out there and you could be successful, but entering into a contract with any publisher gives them rights over your book that I frankly don't want to give away without them taking risks as well, because that is traditionally what a publisher does. So, I made a decision to go another route.  (Ironically, right after I made the decision, I got offers from two shady publishers)
Self Publishing!
Amanda Hocking is my inspiration for deciding to self publish. She was really the reason I felt like I could write at all. The link takes you to her story of self publishing. I discovered her books looking for something cheap to read on Amazon that interested me. I discovered her Trylle series first, and fell in love with it. I read all three of those and then started reading her other stuff. I have to explain something about myself. I am really tuned in to grammar and the proper use of English, and I noticed some mistakes in her writing. However, I was able to overlook this because the stories were that good. So, then I did some snooping on her blog, and saw that she was self published and had a moment of, "yeah, that makes sense." Which led to me thinking, "if she can do it, why can't I?" That seed was planted in my head right then, three years ago. I never really said anything except to tell my husband about her, but I don't think he was all that interested. Fast forward to last summer, my husband said he thought I should write a book. At that point, I had been a stay at home mom for years and years. That was all the encouragement I needed. I decided to go for it. I started Imagine When and it took me about 9 months to write it. Considering it is just under 60K words it is somewhat amazing that it took that long, but I'm not practiced in sitting down and forcing myself to write.
I have started on my second novel, a work which is not yet named. I'm very excited about it though.