I’m having those feelings. You know? Those feelings? Unless you have written a book and have waited anxiously for your release day, then you won’t know exactly how I feel. For those who have written a book, then perhaps your will recognise your own feelings in mine as I try to explain them.
Overwhelmingly there is the nervousness – the fear of the unknown, but hoping for the best. How will the readers react to my story? Will they like it? Love it? Loathe it? Want to marry it and have its babies? You know that some people with hate it – it’s a given and you prepare yourself for it – but will the majority favour or frown on it?
The public is a fickle lover and you never can tell.
That nervousness goes deep. The Blinding Light is due out in less than 42 hours, and that nervousness is on the surface of everything I do. Not as bad as my first release, that is true, but still there.
So you psych yourself – you tell yourself that it’s okay if this one bombs. You tell yourself that you’ve done a fantastic job no matter what the response to your book is. You tell yourself that your family loves you, and will love you no matter if you are a great author, or just a ho-hum author. You tell yourself you can move to the outer suburbs of Antarctica and live off fish if you need to run away in embarrassment.
But through those nerves and pulses of pride, there is a sense of calm. This is a good book. It will be fine. If an author didn’t have that feeling, then the book would have never been submitted to a publisher. You know your baby is good – down deep, each author knows this. But you want your baby to shimmer, sparkle and shine. You want them to be revered and reread. You want the reader to have such a good time, that your name is entered in their family bible because they want you to be a part of their lives.
You are excited, too. Excited for yourself, excited for your readers, excited for your book. Something that didn’t exist a year ago, a single thought, has been immortalised onto paper in the form of a written word, and you are responsible for that. Those voices in your head? Well, they are about to be voices in other people’s heads as well. That character? That character no longer exists just for you – they will be out there for the rest of the world to experience and love as well. You are so excited you want to tell the world – your neighbours, the man walking his dog past your house, the high school kids at the bus stop and even that bird that just flew over the house. You never know! That bird could be a shifter who has an Amazon account and internet connections!
But then suddenly, you realise halfway through telling the old lady at the grocery store who is just trying to buy a couple of carrots and potatoes for her dinner, that release means that everyone is going to know the crazy-arsed thoughts inside your head. There is a very thin line between a writer and a schizophrenic sometimes. We both hear voices. It’s inevitable that an author’s personality and experiences bleed through into their written word. And all those silly, sexy, crazy, dumb thoughts – yeah, that’s me.
You spin out! You crash! You go up in flames… Okay, maybe not. Maybe you sit there with a coffee and think logically like an adult. You come to the conclusion that you’ve done what you can, and come what may, that book is being released – mistakes and all. You feel better. You are calm.
Then you go and google yourself again, just to make sure there isn’t a review that has magically appeared in the last ten minutes on the internet…
The Blinding Light releases on Monday, 14th of July and can be purchased (pre-release) from here:
eBook from Dreamspinner: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5211
Paperback from Dreamspinner: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5212
eBook from ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-theblindinglight-1557675-149.html