I can feel the tingle of fear beginning to build as the line edits are now completed on my first ‘to be published’ novel. This means the last few little bits need to be tweaked, the marketing and promo content pulled together into a cohesive package and then it will be good to go.

My next post will probably detail more about the book itself, but for now let me say that the characters have been fun ones to write. The biggest issue so far between the people I’ve sent it to has been the name of the main character. At this point, it is still subject to change. Which is kind of awkward.

It is actually really easy to self-publish something these days. There are no barriers to entry as long as you have a computer, a little bit of technological savvy and a bank account for your hard earned royalties. There are posts scattered all over the internet reiterating this. The freedom is both a blessing and a curse. If you want to put up something you are proud of, then it actually takes a lot of hard work and you have to treat it as though you are all the parts of the traditional publishing process. This takes time. Commitment. Help from others where possible. And while you are doing that, more and more books continue to flood the market, making it harder to stand out.

So for this one, I have some aspirations, a few goals I would like to hit. Nothing more than that. No delusions that despite the hard work this is going to be a best seller or a masterpiece of literature. It’s not meant to be. It is a fun crime drama with an appeal to a certain market. If they like it, then that’s good enough. As long as one other person gets as much pleasure out of it as I did, then each one of those pesky line edits will have been worth it.