It has been just over a year since I woke up one morning to an email from some lovely people in The States who told me they wanted to publish my little book.
A year!
2020.
Nothing much happened there, right? Just an ordinary, boring, humdrum kind of year. So I thought I’d let you know what I got up to during that time (book-related, of course, not just a random diary).
Let’s see…
I made a website… and then entirely failed to write anything.
I made a plan for a monthly newsletter… and then didn’t do it.
I started social media accounts… and kind of half-arsed them all.
It might seem that I’ve done sod all in the last 12 months but it has been bloody busy, although, if I’m honest, that was more through fear than anything else.
Why fear?
Well, I signed a contract for a series but I only really had one book. Oh sure, I was writing the second and I kind of knew what would happen in the third but I saw this as an ‘all eggs in one basket’ kind of situation. I grew very anxious that The Book and the Blade was just a flash in the pan and that when I finally submitted book 2 the publisher would hate it. So I powered through the second book, terrified it would be shit or that I’d forget how to write, and when that was finished I went immediately to three and four. One after the other. Non-stop. Writing like a nutter and feeling like a fraud. Imposter syndrome they call it. Because you see, there’s me, signing a contract as an author but what if I wasn’t one?
What if I just got lucky that one time?
On some odd level, I think I’ve considered this time between contract and publication as a gift, a strange little period of limbo where I haven’t yet been found out. I’m not even sure I really believe it myself. I don’t think I will until I’m holding the book in my hand. Strangely enough, this has spurred me on to write more than ever; to get the most out of it before it all goes tits up.
So, along with some admittedly mediocre social media dabbling, I have spent the year:
Completing two rounds of edits for Book 1
Writing Book 2
Editing Book 2
Submitting Book 2
Writing Book 3
Editing Book 3
Writing Book 4
Writing a completely new novel unrelated to The Book and the Blade
Editing it
Editing a novel I wrote in 2016.
Submitting it (last week in fact)
Drinking too much
Sleeping too little
And boring the ever-living shit out of my wonderful wife and friends with incessant questions about devils, demons, folklore and whether or not ghosts can touch themselves.
Tomorrow I will be submitting the new book and adding that anxiety to the big ball of crazy that is me.
Oh, and I’ve already started working on another project, a zombie project – and it’s probably worth noting here that I’m scared of zombies (a therapist would have a field day with this).
Thank dog I have so many wonderful people around me, many of whom I met this last year. Without them, I think I’d go crazy.
Thanks for reading