Celebrations and Palpitations

It's back down to earth with a rather exciting bump. Forget all those exotic locations of the previous few posts, I am now back in the UK, shivering in the snow, and looking forward to the next stage of my writing journey.

The good news is I have a publication date - 1st August 2018.

I now feel I have entered the world of a proper writer – no longer an imposter. 

I have an editor (it takes a professional to realise that when I was waffling on about the beginnings of a beard the word I was actually looking for was stubble....) and hopefully very shortly, a book cover.

For the last few years I have been lucky enough to have had a lot of time to concentrate on my writing ‘hobby’. I was an empty-nester, my fledglings had flown and we had moved away from our friends and family in the UK to live in the Netherlands. I didn’t have a job, and with only a relatively small circle of new friends and acquaintances, I had an awful lot of time on my hands. A more sociable person might well have gone mad at the thought of the long lonely day stretching ahead once their other half had left for work each morning, instead I sat down at my keyboard and wrote (although I may have gone just a little bit crazy at the same time).

I can write a novel in social isolation, but the next bit, the publicity, the marketing, requires the opposite – engagement. Subliminal engagement, because  it's strictly forbidden in book marketing circles to SHOUT OUT that you’d like everybody  TO BUY your novel, PLEASE.  Instead it's all about creating a buzz, or a murmur, an interest, luring the potential reader in...

So while I am still basking in the celebrations of having a publication date, I am also having a few palpitations at the thought of the road ahead and all that it entails.  

I will be stepping out into unknown territory. I’ve never been very good at conversing with strangers, I’m the shy, retiring type, but the upside of social media is that I don’t actually have to talk to people face-to-face about my upcoming publication. I can hide behind my Twitter profile, create a whole new persona on Instagram, and re-invent myself as the bubbly, vivacious author of an entertaining romantic comedy that will tug at your heart-strings and make you smile all at the same time. 

Of course I have to be aware of potential sales figures, but right now I'm still on my newbie-author high. It's extremely satisfying (and also something of a relief) to know that a publisher has put their faith in me and my writing, and believes that I have produced something that other people will want to read.