u/Bee-and-the-Slimes

Apologies if this isn't in the right sub...

I've been weaving a little bit of Egyptian history into the background of one of my characters. She never appears in the book itself, but some of her echoes are left for my main character to find (like audio logs in a video game).

TL;DR version of all this, is how does one write so modern brains can interpret the pronunciation of what's said? I'm not looking for full-on paragraphs, but more of small phrases, questions, or greetings.

Latin's easy, but this is kind of stumping me, since there aren't usually enough vowels to go around.

Edit: Transliteration! I think that's the word I'm looking for (Gods, I'm a derp).

Sorry if I've got the wrong flair.

I've been working on a book for the last couple of years, and what started as just a self-indulgent writing project turned out to be a quadrilogy. My mom found out about it right after I finished writing book 1 and ended up reading it, which got her to finally push toward writing a thriller that she'd been working on since I was a kid.

Skip four years later, she's on her second book, and I'm starting book four. We're kind of pushing one another forward with some friendly competition. I'm mostly just doing it to get these ideas out of my head, and I'm super glad for her finally finishing something she'd been wanting to do for almost 40 years.

The thing is... we're both published through KDP. She's sold about 10 copies so far. I've sold 2.

And I feel like I'm a fraud.

Not because I've sold less or anything dumb like that. I'm really proud of her! I went into this with the mindset I just wanted to hold a copy in my hands (my author copies of the first two books should be here this afternoon! I'm excited!).

I just... don't know how to describe it. I know saying "I wrote this physical thing I have in my hands" makes me an author, but am I really? Or am I still just a "writer"?

Or did I just spit something out and toss it at Amazon to print?

I hate imposter syndrome.

EDIT: I'd like to add that I'm not going out of my way to market these (and yes, I put it on Kindle, too). Like I said, I'm just happy to have physical copies. I have a small following/fanbase already with my art, so if I only sell a small handful, I'm still pretty happy with the results. But I'm really thankful for all the advice! Going forward I'll take them into consideration if I want to go full hog. Like I replied to someone below: All of these comments have really helped put a lot of things into a perspective I hadn't thought of going into it. And I feel a lot better than I did writing this originally. I'm an author! Woo!