30 Day Blog Challenge Day 17: What Am I Afraid Of?

It's day 17 of my blog challenge. I'm moving along quite well. Today's assignment is an interesting one: of what am I afraid? The list is quite extensive of things I am kind of afraid of. I guess I'm a 'fraidy cat, as we used to say when I was a kid. But there are a few things of which I'm really afraid. Here they are:

• Heights  Several years ago, some friends and I paid to climb to the top of a lighthouse at the Outer Banks. I knew I wouldn't love it, but I had no idea how terrifying it would be. I got maybe halfway up and came as close as I have ever come to having a panic attack. My heart felt like it was going to burst and I flop-sweated and my breathing became so rapid that I thought I might actually pass out. The ironic thing is that if there had been an elevator to the top, even a glass elevator, I could have gone right up and stood at the railing without any discomfort. It's the climbing and the stairs that just stupefy me with fear.

• Drowning in deep water  I don't particularly relish dying by any method, but the idea of being stranded in deep water, far away from land, and slowly losing strength and slipping under the water, only to still be alive until I give up and my lungs fill with water is just an awful way to go.

• Getting old and dying alone and forgotten  I'm not afraid of dying at all. I have no question about where I'm going after I die. But the idea of living alone and having  no one who cares about me or is with me as I die is just the saddest thing I can think of in this life. I can die in peace if I die surrounded by loved ones.

So what are you afraid of?

The Countdown Begins

I added it up. I had to pull up a calendar to do it--I'm not so much on the math--but it's 26 days until the launch of Shalan Adventure #3, In The Shadow. That's assuming you read this on the day it was published. Just in case, I've included a calendar with the big date highlighted for your counting pleasure.

Note: If you would like, we could make this interactive. You can mark off the days
until the book comes out on this calendar. But please print it out first, or you'll have
a heck of a time getting the Sharpie marks off your monitor.

For me, this part of the process is, in many ways, the fun part. The heavy lifting (aka actually writing the book) is finished. Now it's down to the little last-minute things before it's completely ready for publication. Like publicity. The first thing I've been doing is peppering my social media with questions that I hope will generate interest. Questions like, "Where is Jenn Bezaleel?", "What is Cleo Heflin hiding?", and "Why does Antonio Bezaleel have his garage windows blacked out?". I also created a faux newspaper with a story about how the whole city of Parkersburg is wondering what happened to Parkersburg High School student, Jennifer Bezaleel and it's started appearing on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest. Piece of trivia for you: I used an old picture of the same young woman who will be on the cover. 

Not to insult anyone's intelligence, but THIS IS PURELY FICTIONAL! Please don't start
a panic. Please do start talking about how clever it is and how it must mean the author is
a literary genius and we must all buy this book, along with the first two. 

Speaking of which, it's also time to create the cover art. The first step in that (not including the literally months of rolling it around in my head) took place last week when I met with my friend, fellow teacher, and photographer extraordinaire, Charlie Gesell to talk over my, admittedly still somewhat fuzzy, vision for it. Charlie, as you may recall, took my portrait for the back cover of Kisses and Lies. If he can manage to make even me look presentable, he's sure to make the cover look great. The photo session for it took place in a dark little corner of our school that, after eighteen years, I still had never been before yesterday evening. When Charlie took me down into that basement room and showed me the decrepit wooden door, it was like the heavens opened. It was exactly how I'd pictured the door in the end of the book! He got our model, a lovely trooper of a young woman named Courtney Stackpole, to pose against that cobweb-covered, filthy, ancient door to capture our shared image of just what we wanted the cover photo to look like, and, even before he did his editing magic, I was blown away. I can't wait to see the finished product. For those of you who liked the cover of KAL, be prepared--it's a completely different direction, but I think you'll be blown away too. 

Not actually Charlie or his camera. His was somewhat
kind of similar to this, but only in that it takes pictures.

And then there are the launch preparations. I know it's late in the game, but I'm still not completely decided on how I want to handle it. Frankly, the launch for KAL was a tremendous letdown after Harsh Prey. I spent way more money than I made in book sales and, though I was excited to see the handful of people who came, it made me question whether I should go in a different direction. So I'm strongly and e-launch party on Facebook and Twitter. But I'm also going to put in a call this week to CJs Italian Kitchen, a local restaurant that appears multiple times in the book, and ask about the feasibility of doing something connected with them. A signing later might be appropriate if they are interested. 

It's a launch. Get it? It was a pun. Wait, not a pun.
What's that thing that's spelled the same backwards and forwards?
A palindrome? Yes. It's not a palindrome. The palindrome
of launch would hcnual. It's a play on words, then. So, a pun?
Yeah, I guess it's a pun. 

So be prepared to hear more than you want to in the next few weeks about In the Shadow. Not that I don't feel good about the first two Shalan books, but I really feel like I hit my stride with this book. It strikes the balance between light and dark, soft and hard. It still maintains the snarky voice of Harry, but definitely strikes a deeper, more noirish note. I hope you'll agree.

I'm the author of two novels, both Shalan Adventures. Harsh Prey and Kisses and Lies are both available in paperback and ebook format (Kindle only at the moment). In the Shadow will be available around October 1. A prequel novella, "Harry and the Redheaded Angel", will be free to mailing list members at the beginning of November and for sale in Kindle format the week of Thanksgiving for everyone else. 

Buy on Amazon!

Buy on Amazon!

Writers are Jugglers

I knew going in that writing would be a hard job to do, but I sometimes wonder if I had known all that was involved in trying to be a successful independent author whether I would have published that first book. I like to think I would have, but I think it's probably the ignorance of just how monumental a task sometimes is, is the only thing that makes people start out trying to do it.

First, there's the writing part, but that's not as simple as just sitting down to write. At this moment, I have three different works in progress in various stages of completeness. I'm polishing Shalan book three, which comes out on October 1. I'm about to start the second draft of the prequel novella. And this week I started the initial draft of book four, which is so preliminary that I have no idea even what the title is. And then there's this blog, which I write once a week, as well as contributing to Writing Wranglers and Warriors anywhere from one to three times a month. I also write a book review every month for ClutchMOV, an online lifestyle magazine for my area.

Then there are the various other things that go into the creation of a book. There's cover art and design to think about. Do I do it myself or do I have someone else do it? If so, do I go to my friend the art teacher whose life is probably ten times as busy as mine and hope she has time to work me in? And then there are blurbs and calls to action and the back cover's layout and acknowledgements to think about.

But that's not all there is to being an indie author either. You're also your own publicist. Most of what I do is electronic, though I do make occasional appearances in the meat world and, in actuality, most of my sales are face-to-face. But every day I do the rounds electronically speaking. I check my Facebook page, adding items regularly to remind people that I'm here and I have books for sale and a mailing list to join and a blog (sometimes two) to read. Then I head to Twitter to follow and promote other indie authors so they'll follow and promote me. And when I can, I also post there. And then I check Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing, and CreateSpace to see if there are any new reviews to tout or any new sales. I also check my mailing list distribution program to see how many people have or haven't opened my weekly email blasts or if anyone has joined or quit the list. And finally, there's my website to maintain. As a little-known indie, I can hardly afford to pay someone to do that for me. And there are even publicity flyers to be designed and printed and distributed. When I have time to do more than that, I try to contact librarians and booksellers and organizations about scheduling a signing or reading or getting my book placed with them. And that's not everything. There are dozens of other little things that go into creating an audience and getting reviews and getting my book in front of people, but I won't bore you with the list.

And then there are the personal appearances. I have launch parties every time I come out with a new

book and readings and signings whenever I can. But, after the first launch, I've found them to be, at best, break-even propositions financially. Because of a recent financial setback, I've had to start really watching every penny I spend, so I have to seriously consider whether something is financially viable before I do it now. So I'm also a bean counter. Yes, ultimately, there's a return on that investment, but you have to have it to spend it and my pool of spendable cash is now much smaller than it was just a month ago, so I have to decide between projects sometimes.

In looking back on this, I realize it probably sounds negative. I don't mean it to. I really do love writing. And I love the idea of someone reading and loving my book. And I'm also aware that I would probably be doing a lot of these same things if I had an agent and a publisher. I just thought it might be interesting to take a look behind the curtain, so to speak, at all that's involved in the indie author life.

Buy on Amazon!

Buy on Amazon!

I'm the author of two novels, both Shalan Adventures. Harsh Prey and Kisses and Lies are both available in paperback and ebook format (Kindle only at the moment). In the Shadow will be available around October 1. A prequel novella, "Harry and the Redheaded Angel", will be free to mailing list members at the beginning of November and for sale in Kindle format the week of Thanksgiving for everyone else.