when it comes to publishing

What a whirlwind.  That sums all of this up.

On the one hand it feels like just yesterday I was celebrating the end of 8th grade in 2000 with @klreynol (pic on left) and within mere weeks of starting my book series.  On the other hand it seems like a lifetime passed before I was celebrating the publication of the first novel with @klreynol in 2014 (on the right, duh) and within six months of releasing the second.  It is in some ways as if I just sat down to start tinkering with Createspace, reading how to go about submitting a document for publishing.  And in other ways it feels like I've spent 14 years running a marathon and now it's time to cross the finish line and let people see what kind of time I made.

On the third hand (........) it feels like this was never going to get here and now that it has I want it to go back to how it was before when things were so much simpler.

It's funny how things like that happen, right?  I think so, at least.  Three hands and all.

Publishing has been everything I thought it would be and yet not how I pictured it at all.  I think if you asked me ten years ago what I thought would happen I would have said I'd be getting a big 'ol author's advance and sitting pretty in a huge house while the book FLEW off the shelves.  Not really the case, as I sit in my apartment and stress out about buying so much marketing material and boxes of books to sell to people because it's easier than Amazon.  But still, the book is out there, and still, the book is selling.  Not by the thousands, but it's selling.  And it's great and terrifying both at once and for however scared I was to do this I am infinitely pleased it's finally done.

No more going back and changing storylines, no more sliding in and adding a page or two of dialogue and undoing the wrongs one character did to another.  No more changing Banning's tone, no more making Bryna snarkier than she was or Sydney more charming than she ultimately became.  No more beefing up roles.... no more making the death of certain characters more or less horrifying.

For those of you already in the know, I clearly don't hold back in my death toll.  And I don't kill any of my characters just for the sake of killing them, FYI.  Everything in these books happens for a reason, and that is one of the morals of the story throughout "The Onyxus Chronicles."  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, or so Newton's third law so eloquently states.

And bottom line, life was never supposed to be fair for Banning David Sol.  Shucks.

Every time I get the notification I've been tagged in a photo, my heart skips a beat to see that it's a copy of my book someone has taken a picture of.  Everytime I get a message in my e-mail or from Facebook in regards to what someone thought of something they read, I can't keep the smile off my face.  All I wanted from this was to know people were reading my work and getting something out of it.

Even the people who send a big 'ol "FUCK YOU!" to my inbox in regards to the ending of the book, it still makes me smile.  I always said if I could make someone cry with what I wrote then I did my job.  it means I created characters that on some level resonate and there is no greater victory than that.  At least for me there's not.

I had the launch/signing last week Friday and it was a great success.  Mostly because people actually came.  It's always my fear when I throw any sort of party that no one is going to come, so there was a lot of relief flooding through me when it wasn't just my parents and a handful of friends.  And for every person that walked through the door my smile just got bigger and bigger because I didn't do all of this for myself, I did it for everybody else.  To see people willingly take part in this adventure just popped me right over the moon.

We ate, we drank, we laughed a lot.  My friend Joni had everyone get up and form a circle around me at one point to commemorate the occasion.  @klreynol and @markstyleme both said some nice words and then I in turn said a few as well.  You can see that below if you'd like (c:

I spent the day after the event feeling a bit under the weather.  I don't know if it was the culmination of all that stress melting away or what, but that's how it happened.  Between sleeping for long chunks of time throughout the day, I attempted to clean my neglected apartment.  While listening to some good music I thought a lot about how far I've come and how far I have yet to go (and probably pretended I was "deep" while doing so).  One book coming out is fantastic and having a signing of said book is even better, but there are more books to edit/write, more signings to plan for, and more people to get on my side when it comes to this literary journey I've embarked on.

As I was vacuuming I started thinking about my Grandpa Bill.  He passed away last March, and after we'd gone to Indiana to pay our respects I wrote a blog about how bad of a week it had been, including but not limited to his death (Part I here and Part II here).  In the second blog I shared a quick story about my Grandpa that occurred when I was twelve while visiting he and my grandmother for a few days in the summer of 1997.

I'd been left alone with them for maybe three or four days, my parents having driven back to Wisconsin so I could spend some time in Indianapolis and visit with my aunt, uncle and cousin as well.  When my parents came back to get me, they stayed the night and we left the next day.  I remember getting buckled into the backseat and seeing my grandfather shuffling toward the car so I rolled the window down and he leaned in through it.

"I've got some advice for you, boy," he said, kinda smirking the way he did when he felt like he was being clever.
"Yeah?"
"Whatever you do, do it good."  And he patted my arm and took a step back and waved goodbye.

It makes me so happy I was able to get this book finished with so much of my family able to see it.  When I think alllllllll the way back to the very beginning of this journey, I had made a cheap-o Geocities webpage for my book.  On it I asked people for money (cue embarrassment), claiming I needed funding for paper and supplies to keep on writing.  And really what a sham because my parents bought me everything I needed to print off copies of the book and all that jazz and I just had some big picture in my head that I needed to be bankrolled.

I'm sure my mom scoffed in the way she does, and I'd imitate it right now if everyone could hear me do it.

A few weeks after I made the webpage, I saw my grandfather when we flew to California for a wedding.  As soon as he saw me get off the plane, he gave me a big hug and he handed me a $100 bill.  He told me he wanted a signed copy whenever I got around to publishing my book.

And it makes me so sad that I won't be able to hand him his copy.

I know he's somewhere else now and I know he would be/is proud of what I've done, but nothing could really compare to any of this other than seeing that crooked smile and maybe a wink from him as I hand over my creation.  I think that's what would really drive all of this home and make it come full circle for me... I think that's what would break down the final barrier for me to realize just how real this all is.

But he's gone now, and that's okay too.  I wanted to keep a copy of the finished book for myself to sit on my own bookshelf, but I felt stupid doing it because I have every copy ever written sitting in a box in my garage.  Now however, I feel keeping this particular one as my own copy will suit me just fine.

When all is said and done I look back on this journey and realize, only now, that I have finished what I set out to do.  I think I have a habit of doing that and I don't think it's a bad habit to have at all.  Saying you'll publish and actually doing it are two very different things and now that it is over with, I feel much more confident going forward.  There is a lot of editing to do now on the remaining two books, a few wonderful characters that need my love and attention, and a fourth book to write and send the series off with a bang.

I'm gonna have to buy more red pens.  Toodles gang (c:

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