I can hardly believe it. My first novel is finally going out into the world.
It's been a very long journey, and there were so many distractions. I wrote The Portrait many years ago, when I was a young mother at home with two children. I had recently left my job and didn't know where I was headed, both literally and figuratively. We had moved into a ramshackle farmhouse, a family property where we thought we could stay “temporarily” until we could figure out what we were doing.
“Temporarily” has become twenty years.
I have so many things to say about this journey, it doesn't make sense to try to fit it into a single blog post or newsletter. But it has occurred to me that many of you are aspiring authors, and if my journey can serve as an inspiration or reality check (or both!) to you, I'll be happy to put all of it out there for you to read and think about.
For now, I am exhausted! Putting up an ebook is not the cakewalk that people would have you think it is. There are a lot of tiny details that need to be sorted out, and what's more, the sequence for getting everything done right isn't clear. Who knew that you could mess up your Amazon author page if you tried to claim it before you had a book to claim? Who knew that you couldn't get a proof copy from Ingram in anything less than two weeks? (after my pub date!) Who knew that upload errors in Ingram are “normal” and can be ignored? Arrgh.
I'm going to hunker down for a little bit as I try to get ready for the holidays, three birthdays, and a novella that should have been done by now! I'll be back on pub day with my Amazon link and (I hope) a free novella for anyone who wants to take a look at my alter ego.
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