More Than a Hobby - From High School Blogger to Good Fish Publishing
When I was in high school, I started a blog called TBAWTD—The Best At What They Do. The concept was simple: find students who were exceptionally skilled at something and ask them to tell me their story. What made the Drama Club lead tick? What inspired the school’s most notorious rock band? What did it take for them to get where they were?
Because if there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that everyone has a story to tell.
Even me.
My name is Sonya Fisichella. I am the daughter of immigrants, and I flew into Orlando International Airport just months after 9/11. I thought I was coming to the United States for a vacation, not realizing that I wouldn’t see my extended family again for twenty years.
That’s where this part of my story began.
But getting from Pinellas County, where I was raised, to Dixie County is a story of its own. I wasn’t born here, but I’ve never felt at home anywhere quite like I have since moving to Cross City.
I grew up below the poverty line, living in a rental house with my parents and brother on about $24,000 a year. Today, I own a home here. I’m a business owner. I started an outreach arts organization through my local church.
I guess somewhere along the way, I got tired of being told the odds were against me.
Creativity runs through my family in Costa Rica. Yet growing up, I was taught that writing was a hobby and music was a pastime—not something I could build a life around.
What didn’t occur to me then was that God is the One who gifts His children, and He does it intentionally.
In 2021, I published my debut young adult Christian novel, DREAMER. It is a coming-of-age story about mental health, trauma, and loss that also incorporates humor and proclaims the hope that can only be found in Jesus.
I’ll be honest: my hopes for how far it could go weren’t very high. After all, it was fiction. Could God really use a fictional story for His glory?
The answer was yes.
He taught me that just because a story is fictional doesn’t mean it has to be fake.
I wrote DREAMER during one of the most trying seasons of my life, while I struggled heavily with suicidal thoughts. Four of the six years I battled those thoughts were spent writing that book.
I remember finishing DREAMER and crying in my husband’s arms because I believed I had just given my main character the hope, freedom, and happy ending I would never have myself.
But it wasn’t until I sent the book off for publishing that my own freedom finally came.
God healed my mind.
And then, years later, God reminded me once again that the odds don’t get the final say.
Last summer, DREAMER reached #1 in Amazon’s Hispanic American Literature category.
But I began to realize that maybe publishing my own story wasn’t the end of what God intended to do with it.
About a year ago, God began putting something on my heart: start a publishing company.
I wanted to help other writers do what once seemed impossible to me: take the story God had given them and turn it into a professionally published book. I wanted to create a place where writers could find the people and resources they needed to take a story from an idea to a realized dream—editing, formatting, cover design, websites, author photography, and guidance through the publishing process.
And I wanted to do it differently.
At Good Fish Publishing, authors retain the copyright to their work and keep their book royalties, while we provide the professional services and guidance they need to publish.
I wanted to build a place where authors and creatives would never be told that their gifts were “just a hobby.”
The last thing I expected was that God would call me to step into the role of publisher in a small town like Cross City. On paper, maybe the odds don’t make sense. But by now, I’ve learned not to question what God can do.
I shouldn’t be surprised by His leading.
Because all those years ago, when I started TBAWTD, I was fascinated by people who had found the thing they were gifted to do. I wanted to hear their stories. I wanted to know what inspired them, what they had overcome, and what kept them going when the odds seemed stacked against them.
I didn’t know then how much that question would come to define my own life.
And now, through Good Fish Publishing, I get to ask it again.
What’s your story?
To learn more about Sonya Fisichella and Good Fish Publishing, visit GoodFishPublishing.com, follow Good Fish Publishing on Facebook, or email goodfishpublishing@gmail.com to schedule a consultation.
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