Don't Lose Yourself

Hello Lovely Writers,

Sorry for the delay in the post today. Whew it has been a crazy couple of weeks, culminating in the launch of The Hunters tour on Friday. And I have been so far behind. I am crazy swamped and it seems that everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

My cover artist is not working out. The Tour has started and I don't have a cover. Fortunately, another author friend saw the horror that the cover artist sent and she is rescuing me. (Thank you Karina Kantas of Author Assist. You are a saint!)

The tour has started and my editor dropped off the face of the earth. I am scrambling to use Prowritingaid and Grammarly to get through everything. (Not what I was planning to need to do) and the next two days will be non-stop layout so I can get ARC copies out. I have been working 16 hour days scrambling to fill the stops in my tour, get materials produced for the tour, promote the tour and get everything ready for the launch.

My PA's who were going to contact bloggers for me over Christmas break (my husband and son) bailed, leaving me to tackle that mountain alone. (Thank you, Angela B. Chrysler from Brain To Books, for sending out a mass email to your bloggers today to help me get more stops!)

From the reader's perspective (and even for the authors who are looking at it from the outside) this all sounds fun and exciting, but it is also a nightmare. I am a neurotic planner. For every book launch before this one, I had the book finished, arcs ready, and then I started reaching out to bloggers for the stops. I was writing guest posts and character spotlights long before anyone claimed them.

But one of my New Years resolutions was to stop planning so much and leap. It's scary as hell, people! But I needed to do it because the launch for The Hunted kept getting delayed and getting delayed, and if I had waited, it would have gotten delayed again.

I spend so much time planning that sometimes I forget to live. And even though I am stressed, even though I am scrambling, even though I have this horrible fear that I am going to totally flop on my face and fail, I am also exhilarated by the people rallying around me to help promote. I am ecstatic by the awesome stops I am getting on my tour (I had a great live reading by a famous Audiobook narrator last night, and on the 31st I am going to be on Author Radio Network.) I am thrilled as I read through the work I am fixing and go "Hot damn, that's actually pretty good writing!"

Writing is an adventure, publishing is an epic adventure. And the key part of adventure is that we have to open ourselves up to danger. We have to struggle, we have to fight. Unfortunately, we don't live in the fantasy realm, and it isn't guaranteed that if I just stay true to the path, I will eventually make it.

But if I don't stay true, then I can never make it, right?

So, here's to the madness that is this profession of writing. Here's to the chaos, the stress, the tears, the hair pulling, the deep depression, the highs, the exhilaration, and the hope.

Here's to my tour

and here's to your dreams!

And until next time,

Keep Writing!

#Advice #Embracingstress #Marketing