Rebecca Benison’s debut novel hits the shelves

With kidnappings, murder, and conspiracy lining it’s 332 pages of Rebecca Benison’s debut fiction novel “Harvest Cruise,” the book is sure to grab the attention of readers.

A content marketer by trade, the Bellmore resident is used to writing and editing for businesses. Benison has previously published work in a variety of other publications including “Workers Write!”  literary journal and the “Empyrean Literary Magazine.” She is now dipping her tow into novel writing.

She wrote her debut book, “Harvest Cruise,” on her lunch breaks over the course of a year.

Finding a home for her book proved to be more difficult than she anticipated, she explained. Talking with agents and publishers, and navigating the process can be a time consuming and an arduous task. Her novel eventually found its home at small Canadian publisher, Chicken House Press, and was officially release on Jan. 28.

“Finding a home for the work has been a challenging process that you don’t necessarily think about when you’re writing it,” said Benison.

For Benison, organization and preparation was the key to success — and utilizing X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Due to the active writing community on the platform, she was able to make a spreadsheet of agents, when she reached out to them, and when to follow up.

Social media can come in handy in more than one way while writing a novel. After the heavy lifting of writing the novel, having a social media presence can be crucial for marketing the work, even before finding a publisher or agent, you’ll need to prove you will have readers.

“Building up your market early is a huge thing,” she said. “Once you do get to the point where you have finished the work and you’re shopping it out, having a presence on social media is actually a really big deal to a lot of agents and publishers.”

Agents and publishers still rely on authors, though, to continue to market their own work due to lack of marketing budgets. A social media following though, no matter how small, can be a game changer.

“Definitely finding one social media network that you’re comfortable with, and trying to build up an audience there, I would say is important,” Benison explained.

The book is now available through Chicken House Press and on Amazon Kindle.

“Get swept up, relate to the characters, and find something engaging,” Benison said.