Transcript:

Today’s video is part announcement, part explanation, about my first novel.

Back in March 2024, I self-published my debut novel, The Soul Child, accomplishing a dream I’ve had since I was a small child. Now, two years later, in March of 2026, I will be republishing a fully revised edition of that novel.

“Why?” you may ask.

I have several reasons, all of which I will be unpacking in this video. But the short answer is: since its original release, I have learned so much about storytelling, revision, structure, and voice—and I finally feel ready to tell this story the way it deserves to be told.

So today, I want to share the story behind The Soul Child, the weird and wonderful journey I’ve taken with it, and why I ultimately chose to rewrite and republish.

Hi, my name is C. Sloan Lewis, and welcome to my channel!

In September of 2021, after several years of putting writing on the back burner to focus on my teaching career, I had an idea for a novel that hit me like lightning. It was so vivid and alive that I needed to start writing it right away. I wrote as much as I could in that first sitting, and then I came back and did it again the next day, and the next.

Three months later, I had a 120,000-word first draft.

It was messy, chaotic, and full of problems, but it was alive in a way a story had never been for me before. It was the most exhilarating writing experience I’d ever had. Every scene felt like a discovery, every chapter like an adventure, and the characters felt like real people.

After finishing that manuscript and going through a couple of rounds of revisions, my husband and I decided to get pregnant, and it was a rough pregnancy. With so little bandwidth, I had to put writing aside completely. It was only a couple of months after my daughter was born and life had settled down a little that I was able to return to my manuscript.

I revised it over and over again until it was the best I could make it with the skills I had at the time. Buuuut… when you’re a single-income family with a newborn, hiring editors and coaches just isn’t in the cards. So I said, “screw it,” and self-published anyway.

And I don’t regret that decision for a second because, after that, everything changed.

When my daughter started daycare around six-months, and I went back to teaching, I joined a writing workshop. I started studying the craft even more seriously than I had in college. I read, I practiced, I learned from other writers—and my writing leveled up drastically.

Then I attended a writing conference, and it was like someone switched on the lights. I realized that if I wanted The Soul Child to be the beginning of a series, I couldn’t just leave it as it was. I needed the foundation—Book 1—to reflect the writer I was becoming. Not the writer I used to be.

So I decided to rewrite the entire book. Even though friends and professionals advised against it, even though I had other book ideas to work on, because I care that much about this story and the sequels that I plan to follow it.

I also realized that structurally, I had too much story crammed into one book. So I cut entire chapters from the end, moved them into what is now the beginning of Book 2, and gave Book 1 a clearer, stronger arc.

Then, in October of 2025, I finally finished the revisions. I had a new manuscript that was stronger, more focused, and truer to the story I had originally dreamed up. But then uncertainty and fear reared their ugly heads again…

There are so many articles and opinions out there warning authors not to revise and republish, not to look “amateurish,” to only move forward and never look back. If the book didn’t work the first time, erase it from existence and start entirely new. So I started second-guessing myself and wondering if I should really just move on.

But something amazing happened that was like a neon sign telling me to go for it.

On my YouTube video where I talked about audacity, so many of you responded with encouragement, with your own stories, and with this shared belief that building a creative career isn’t about following someone else’s path. It’s about building your path.

I realized that, yeah, I teach that. I believe that. And now I needed to live that.

So I made the decision to republish The Soul Child in March, two years to the day since first publishing it, because it feels meaningful. It feels right for me and this journey that I’m on.

Because here’s what I’ve come to understand:

Creative careers are not races we run against other people. They’re journeys we run with our craft, our voice, our passions, and our values. Success doesn’t have one definition, and it certainly doesn’t have one path.

This is my path. It might not look like any others, but it’s the right one for me.

So, all that to say, I can’t wait to share this revised edition with you. And if you’d like a video where I walk you through exactly what changed from the original to the revised version—let me know in the comments.

Thank you for being part of this journey. You’ve got some writing to do, so I’ll see you in the next video. Ta-ta!