Fall River comes out in less than a month. The gothic, literary, historical story that has taken up space in my head for the better part of eight years is finally, at long last, being birthed in a completely unexpected way. (And no, it usually doesn’t take me that long to write a book, but between my first draft and the last one, I moved three hundred miles from the home I’d lived in for thirty years, started a new career, wrote another book and got my degree, so…) To keep the baby metaphor going, it’s like when you plan on a home water birth and end up having an emergency c-section. You’ve had a half a dozen or more home water births and are a pro, but a c-section is a whole different animal and the learning curve is STEEP. You can’t really prep for it because you don’t know what you don’t know. Ultimately, you end up with the same baby, just by a different method.
The thing is, I haven’t been this terrified since my first novel, Read My Lips came out in 2008. Because I had lots of professionals invested in the success of my little YA about a deaf girl, i had lots of help. Editors, copy editors, designers, and a whole marketing team, (though in reality it was probably and intern). I felt supported and the potential ramifications of y ignorance of the process was muted because of that support. By my third and fourth books, I felt like a pro. Professional enough to know when someone on the team had dropped the ball.
Now it’s me. I am the one juggling all the balls. It is both liberating and very, very lonely.
I am the one making the decisions. I thought it would be cool to do a blog tour with the same marketing people who did my Born of Illusion books. In a kind of where are all my now grown YA readers now kind of way. Would they like my adult book? I won’t know because my decision making capabilities have been slowed by ALL THE DECISIONS I HAVE TO MAKE. Like, should I use this newsletter program or that one? Which marketing professional should I use? What kind of advertising and where? Do I like this website template or that one? How on earth do I use -fill in the blank- program? Paralyzed, I missed the blog tour window.
And, since I am being so honest here, I am absolutely terrified that you all won’t like my book. So on top of my fear of botching social media and not finding my readers, I have the age old author fear that the book just sucks and not even Harper Collins’ best and brightest could fix it.
But…
In addition to the anxiety I have over the whole process, there is a certain, liberating joy that comes from owning the whole process. Yes, when I make mistakes, I only have myself to blame, but when I figure something out, when I see the final cover, when I batch a weeks worth of social media or come up with a good idea, the pride in myself is palpable. I am creating. I am making something from nothing and let me tell you, that is SO MUCH better than merely consuming. I am also paying other creators to help me, other female entrepreneurs which means so much to me. With my choices, as uneasy as I am about making the wrong one, I am building my own community of creators. I think that web is something that indie-published authors often forget.
it hit me today that i love being an indie author. I love owning my own little publishing country and I love having an agent and being on submission at the big five. I don’t have to be one or the other. i can do both.
And I am.
Don’t forget you can sign up for my newsletter here (I am figuring it out!)
You can pre-order Fall River Here
And you can see my other trad published works here and here.
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