Many of you may know that I released a new book a few days ago. Now, I’m not a VIA (that’s Very Important Author) like Tara Sivec or Jasinda Wilder. I am a BIA (that’s Baby Indie Author.) Okay, so I’m making this shit up as I go, shut up!
Moving on. So, I released, Bite Me, my new paranormal romance that is part drama, part danger, and a lot of comedy. I’ve gotten some very good reviews, some great reviews, and a couple 2 star ratings (I’ll live, thanks). In the last 5 days, I have experienced a huge range of emotions and some crazy thoughts. Okay, nuttier than usual, since it’s pretty insane in my brain most days.
Here’s what I’ve decided. Authors go through 5 stages when they release a book. It’s probably just me in this group of ‘authors’ but for the sake of my delusions, let’s pretend it’s all authors.
Stage 1: The Download– Yay! It’s downloaded. It’s done. The book is on its way to the hot little hands of my thousands (or, in my case, hundreds) of readers.
Stage 2: Goodreads– Okay, I’ve downloaded info on my book to Goodreads. Then cringing when I see that only my five closest friends and my sister-in-law have added it.
Stage 3: The Blog Tour– It’s hard to find bloggers with time to do your tour. I know most of them have tons of review requests and day jobs on top of it. It happens. If they do post, I spend half the day adding links to their websites on all my social media accounts because I’m OCD like that.
Stage 4: Sales– Now I start obsessively checking the sales reports (that’s my OCD again) on all the distribution websites. I sold 50 books in 1 day! Yay! Then I don’t sell another book for over 24 hours so I fall into a bottle of wine one night and wake up with the hang over from hell the next day to see I’ve sold another 100 copies! Yay again! Well, I whisper it this time….I do have a fucking hang over, people!
Stage 5: Rinse and Repeat– The book has been out a week. Time to start writing another book.
Now, it sounds like I’m whining here. And I totally am. But I would never consider NOT doing it. You know, there comes a time when every author asks themselves, Why in the hell am I doing this to myself? Simple. Because I love to tell stories. I must tell stories. Sharing them with the public is a wonderful part of that process. Whether I have 1 reader or 1 million, I will still tell stories because I love it and it makes me so happy when others love my stories too.
Now, it’s a Wednesday, aka Hump Day, so go forth and hump something!
Hi C.C. I just finished reading Bite Me. I enjoyed very much. Sometimes I am leery of reading books by new authors, but I took a chance with yours and am glad I did. Thank you so much for being a writer. I am hoping to get more in the series. Can’t wait to see if Ivie and the girls get their own hotties.