Keep Calm and...Ahhhhhh!

There's so much going on! Copies of my book are traversing their way to booksellers and distribution warehouses. Tour dates are filling up my calendar. Reviews are coming in from ARCs and press releases are going out.

Yeah, remember that roller coaster analogy I wrote about? I was wrong. This is the top of the hill. Putting yourself out there is scary (even for a Leo like me).

When I used to dream about getting published, the fantasy jumped from holding a physical copy of my book to cashing giant royalty checks. But there's a lot of work in-between: interviews, scouring your story for compelling excerpts, blogging, posting the whole experience to social media, and building a platform.

Then, there are the reviews. Readers are judging my words and style. They're critiquing my plot and characters. This is thrilling and terrifying. I want to hug the readers who "get" my book, or explain my decisions to those who question the missing details I hoped their imaginations would "fill-in."

And what about my co-workers and friends who haven't read my book yet? Will they look at me differently after they flip through some of the "R-rated" content? Did I drop too many F-bombs in the manuscript? Probably. But this book doesn't belong to me anymore. In a few weeks, it will belong to the world. It's a story that streamed down from my crazy imagination to a document. My part here is done.

The Goodbyes makes landfall on July 12. For now, I'll enjoy the calm eye of this creative hurricane. The back winds of the eye wall are whipping up. The urge to "hunker down" grows overwhelming, but I'm gonna Jim Cantore the crap out of this experience!