How the World Should Work

Well, the day I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. After a painfully agonizing wait, Continuity is available for purchase at last. 

It’s strange though. All this time I’ve felt some weird, anxious sensation leading up to now. I sort of expected to have some overwhelming sense of accomplishment and relief when it finally got released. 

But I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I want to  feel like that – quite badly in fact. I want to be jumping for joy and losing sleep over how excited I am. But for some inexplicable reason, all I’m feeling at the moment is…indifference. And I would love to know why, because it doesn’t make any sense. 

Maybe it’s because I know how hard it’s going to be to reach the number of people I want to reach. Marketing, I mean. Its hard to explain, but now that the book is out, I have this “what now” feeling. 

The publisher is going to do a press release soon, so hopefully there will be a little buzz about the book in the near future, at least among the literary community. But that still doesn’t quell the feeling. I guess I’m just intimidated by the enormity of the task ahead of me – getting the book exposed to everyone possible. So what am I supposed to do? I imagine social media will help, but my reach obviously only goes so far. No, I’ll have to come up with something else if I expect this book to sell. 

This whole process has made me respect people that chase their dreams even more so than before. Because it always seems like there’s so much more work to be done once you reach each milestone along the way. Researching and writing the book was difficult, but nothing anyone else couldn’t do with a little drive. Then it was getting a publisher. This wasn’t easy by any means, but again – anyone willing to hear “no” a million times a day can do it as long as they keep trying. And then waiting…that, at least psychologically, was the toughest part. Getting through the edits, exchanging countless emails of revisions, cover suggestions, etc. was grueling. You have this bottled up sensation within you that feels like it’s just itching to burst upon release. 

But now…now that it’s FINALLY here, I realize the hardest part is still ahead of me. Marketing. Ugh. I sort of feel like I’ve been scaling some impossibly navigable mountain, finally reaching what I thought was the precipice, only to find out I’m not even halfway there. 

In any case, I just hope I end up making it where I want to be. I have to be honest, if I didn’t have Mom in my corner pushing me, I really don’t think I’d have the willpower to keep going. All of this has been so overwhelming to me, like I’m trying to gain entry to a world I’ve never been. But I have no choice – I made a commitment to her and I simply can’t hold back and come up for air until her name is on a building. 

One thing I will say, though, is that I’m very fortunate to live in such a great community and have such supportive friends. Words of encouragement go a long way during a venture such as this. Which actually brings me to another point. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I do in fact accomplish my goal for Mom. Then what? This is perhaps one of the more exciting thoughts I’ve had. I imagine all the good things I could do if I had the resources. People I know that could have their lives changed with just a small amount of financial or other assistance. Even my own father, for example. It’s a long way off (if it happens at all), but these kinds of things help give me idea of why I want to succeed to begin with. 

Anyway, I just hope this all goes well. I suppose I have an entire lifetime to try, so I might as well start now. 

Back to that damn mountain.