Momentum Interruptus
I have promotional banners on the way. I have convention table covers on the way. I have the technical stuff to operate sales at my events on the way. I have an artist I'm working with to do promo work that I'm excited to see what he comes up with (and I get to keep all my limbs when I'm done paying him!). I have a website...even though I can't find it when I do Google searches. I have a Facebook page to do updates and promotional shout outs (which fortunately does show up on google searches).
I've made a lot of progress getting ready for "Ash to Ashes" to launch. What I don't have is my book.
I made a crack on my Facebook page that waiting for my book to go to print has been a lot like waiting for April the Giraffe to give birth. You know it's going to happen, but it's been hyped so much you start screaming at the monitor, "Oh My God, JUST GET IT DONE ALREADY!" The longer I have to wait, the more pressure I feel to produce something. The kick to the teeth in that regard is, much like April the Giraffe, it's out of my hands. That's not a condition I've ever been comfortable dealing with. It certainly hasn't gotten any easier in this situation.
One of the things I've been struggling with, and I have to imagine I'm not the only author who deals with this problem, is the fact that working on the next volume, when the first one is so close to going live, feels impossible. Volume 2 is a whole new set of characters, a whole new set of circumstances, and a whole new set of tie-ins to the rest of the series that I have to keep track of and develop. "Wolfkin" seems to be growing with a slightly different tone and approach than "Ash to Ashes," so shifting gears to work on it presents a different kind of challenge. It reminds me of a particular family I know, near and dear to my heart. They just graduated their oldest son from high school barely a year after introducing their newest son into the world. In both scenarios, you have something or someone at two very different ends of a developmental spectrum. They both have to be treated in different ways. While one is getting ready to be sent off into the world, the other one is just beginning to grow and needs constant attention. You lose sleep and worry about both of them for entirely different reasons. Any time you spend focusing on one feels like time you're not spending with the other, but both are equally important. (At least in my case, I won't have to pay for therapy or hospital bills if I massively screw up.)
So here I sit, typing away on a blog that's two days late, procrastinating working on a novel I would like to see further along than it is, while I wait for the final stages of publishing to finish on a book I've been anticipating going to print since this whole process started back in January.
Patience is still not my strongest virtue, especially with myself.
