Taking stock of the journey thus far.

So it’s been a little while since I just talked about where I am in the novel-writing process right now, so I thought I’d check in.

Thing are going okay, not great. “In the Dark” is a book now, self-published, available on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and Createspace  as both an e-book and a paperback. Reviews are excellent, sales not so much.

Part of that, I really think, is that I do not know what I’m doing with promoting. I’m not sure what else might be going on. It’s a long book, maybe that’s turning people off? I haven’t played with the pricing. I set the e-book at 2.99 and the paperback at 12.99 and have just left them. I don’t know if those are good prices or bad prices, or if they are bad, if I should raise or lower them. I also haven’t added to my book family lately. I have to work a full time job, and I really hate short books, so writing a good long book takes a while. I’m hoping to have my faerie story done before Christmas, the sequel to “In the Dark” not long after that, but that will make 3 books in roughly two years, and it took me a couple years to write each of them. I don’t know if that’s prolific enough to satisfy the book-gobling crowd who will ultimately fund me.

A fabulous young friend of mine made the best statement about my nerves over whether to publish or not — she said, you’re miserable when you don’t write, it doesn’t matter if you become a crazy financial success, you obviously just have to do this.

True. I keep returning to that every time I question whether this was a great idea or not. I obviously just have to do this.

And dammit, I’m proud of “In the Dark.” I feel like it breaks away from the high drama and teeny-bopper romance and moves into vampire territory rarely explored. I think it’s a rich book, with real people populating it and real problems surrounding them. The people I’ve talked to who’ve read it agree. I’m a hit among my 13 fans. It won’t let me quit my day job, but I do really feel good about this book. I feel really good about my faerie story. I feel really good about the sequel. I love that I am writing regularly again, and I love that people are enjoying it.

I AM sad about the not-quitting-my-day-job thing, as frankly I do not like my day job much. Although, as a phone rep, it does give me the time to work on roughs for my books while I’m on hold. People often tell each other to put the phone sales person on hold and leave them there, because they can’t hang up and it wastes precious company time. I like being put on hold because I’m on a call, so I’m “working,” but I can write and concentrate on it. Plus at my company, I do get to hang up. When I’m done working on this scene. I’ve hung on hold for better than ten minutes so I can keep writing something I’m really into at that moment. So there’s a perk, anyway.

I’m considering adding some fiction to this blog, just so you can have a taste of what I do when I’m not riding an emotional roller coaster. Although even when I am riding that emotional roller coaster, I am noting how it feels so I can write it correctly when one of my characters has to go through similar emotions. No, really. My best friend of over ten years broke up with me a while back, and while I was sobbing uncontrollably, I was noting how my eyes felt, how my lungs felt, how I tried to stop crying and could not do it. I worked it into a scene a few weeks later.

So that’s where I am now. Writing. Feeling good about writing. Feeling good about what people have said about my writing. Working. Not liking working, but trying to put the time towards more writing.

And while I want this venture to be financially profitable, I want to keep my integrity. I want to write stories that are beautiful and entertaining and a little educating, stories that people want to hang onto and want to read again later. I want to do that for a living, but I don’t want to compromise doing that in order to make more cash. That’s my goal. It may take me longer to get there by sticking to my beliefs, but I do think it will be worth it in the end.