I need a nap...

Indie publishing is no joke and it's not for the faint of heart. Several years ago I decided to go the Independent Publishing route because when it comes to my writing, I'm a little bit of a control freak.

I'm also a 'seek no absolution' type of person. If I fail, I want it to be on my terms and no one else's. Because I'm human like anyone else, I don't want to give myself the opportunity to blame anyone for said failure. Not a publisher, not a marketing
agent, no one. Succeed or horribly fail, it's all on me. It keeps me honest and I need that reality check sometimes.

All that said, Indie publishing is exhausting. It's countless hours of writing, re-writing, editing, re-writing again, in a cycle that takes someone like me *cough- procrastinator -cough* about a year if all goes well. Sometimes five, if life gets in the way.

Diesel is by far my most favorite project to date and while, yeah, it did write itself, it wasn't all a cake walk. You can love something like crazy but after months and months of looking at that one thing... you start to hate it.

I can't tell you how many times my hand has hovered over the 'delete' key because I was just over it. I was tired of looking at it, tired of thinking about it, and just tired period. The writing and the editing is only half of it, though.

Once all that is done, then you've got cover design, which includes HOURS of searching for just the right thing or at least something semi-perfect that will work with the old ass design program you're working off of because you're broke and can't afford the upgrades. After that, if you haven't already torn your hair out, the formatting might finish the year long journey into madness for you. Oh, and my least favorite part... the wait. Waiting for the uploads, waiting for the downloads... waiting for approvals and then waiting to see which way your sales rank is going to go after the product goes live.

For the last two weeks, I've worked almost non-stop wrapping up Diesel. Up at 6:45-7 a.m. and not stopping until the words are blurry and my brain is on fire. But, today, all of that work was suddenly finished on that project and I found it hard to turn my babies (the characters in Diesel) over to the reader. It's a little like sending your children out in the world for the first time. You're terrified people are going to be cruel and hate them. You're hoping that you've made them likable, caring, independent and funny, but what if you haven't? What if everyone else thinks your kid is an asshole?

Once I got the OK to post the live links, I had a minute of panic as all these thoughts ran through my head.
What if people hate this book?
What if it sucks?
What if it sells zero copies beyond what my family and a few friends buy?
I didn't have these worries with either of the Bimini Books or with Texan. I got the projects done, uploaded and didn't stress one way or the other.
Taking a time out today to think about it, I realized my anxiety was based more on the fact that because this is in my opinion, the best book I've ever written, it became important for me that others think the same. I gave myself a pep-talk and also the reminder that I don't write to get rich and I don't write for success. I write because all of my life, I've had these stories in my head and I'm twisted enough to want to share them with the world.
After I calmed down, I realized I'm probably just tired and should take a nap.

As always, thanks for reading!
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