Book Update

Here are a few samples from the cover shoot done for the book:

The layout is being formatted and I should have a few options to choose from by next week.  It is very exciting!!!

The book is finished.  I was planning to put it up on Kindle myself as well as a few other places, but have decided instead to send it to one publisher who is a long shot and to enter it into a contest with the winner being announced in August.  If by September, there is no good news on either of those fronts, I am going to decide on one of the co-publishing/self-publishing type of contracts I have been offered and go with that.  A traditional publishing contract is unlikely without a lot of hours of trying to get my foot in a door which is closing more by the day for all novelists.  As I just don't have hours to devote to that, I have decided to go the co-publishing/self-publishing route (unless of course I win this contest or a traditional publishing contract falls out of the sky)!

I will be mailing my contest entry this weekend, so wish me luck!

Book is Basically Done

My book has been written.  Before I can put it up on Kindle, I need to do a few things like have a cover designed, get permission to use a song's lyrics, get someone to edit my Epilogue, and e-mail an author (as a courtesy) whose book is mentioned in mine.

It is really strange to have it pretty much finished.  54,180 words...194 pages...my words...my story...

I feel more nervous than relieved, but I am excited to move onto other projects once this is done.  I have three or four short e-books I want to write that are adoption related and I already have the skeleton for one of them mapped out so I am looking forward to starting on those shorter projects.

If all goes well, I could potentially have those little details wrapped up within a few weeks and have my book up on Kindle in June, perhaps even by June!!!  It makes me feel shaky and a bit sick to think that people will read what I've written and judge it.  I know that it is ridiculous to feel this way because I have been blogging for six years and people have been reading and judging that for most of those years, but somehow, this seems different.

Wish me luck!

Website Ready, Now to Change Focus...

The website that I have spent two months working on is officially launched on Monday and I am pretty happy with the traffic so far and general response.  I have posts scheduled for the rest of the month, so there is little to do but moderate comments and do a bit of work for next month's posts.

This means that beginning next week, I will have the time to focus on another project and I have to admit that I am procrastinating when it comes to finishing my book and putting it into e-book format.  I have examined my reluctance and there are three things that I think are holding me back.

1.  There are a few things that need to be done that are outside my comfort zone and experience.  These include things such as obtaining permissions necessary to proceed.  There is a reference to another book in my book and as a courtesy to that author, I would like to ask for her permission to reference her book.  There are partial song lyrics, which are critical to one part of the story, but mean that I need to buy the rights to use them.  I have tried before and because they are from another country, ran into some snags and am nervous for the work it will entail.  I am also nervous for what the cost will be - yikes!

2.  I have to admit to being resistant about the whole e-book idea.  If I had a publisher offering to publish an actual book, I could easily finish and edit the book in a weekend because I would be excited and would want to see my writing in print, but an e-book doesn't excited me.  I like the feel of an actual book in my hands, so I don't have a Kindle or other e-reader, though my husband does, so seeing my words on one of those leaves me less than enthused!

3.  I am scared of failure.  What if I get it in e-book format and nobody buys it?  Worse than that, what if a few people buy it and don't like it?  If I don't finish it, I won't have to face these possibilities.

Update

The writing this month has been interesting with attempting to reach my goal of writing 100 articles.  It's amazing how much the pennies start to snowball once you have a library of articles, but it does become difficult to come up with topics for articles.  100 in one month is a lot!  I am at 66 articles so far with only one week left to go.  I am going to push really hard to try to reach my goal just to be able to say to myself that I've done it.

It will be really interesting to add up the pennies at the end of the month though.  I also have chosen my writing goal for February and that is to finish my book and submit it in e-book format on Kindle.  That will also be a tough challenge to meet, but I think that I can do it.

When I was not setting writing goals for myself, I wasn't accomplishing much of anything, so the goals are the way to go!

With just one week left to go for the 100 article challenge, please feel free to leave me any ideas for articles in the comments section.  I'm getting desperate!!!  Thanks!