As I write, it’s just a month until the launch of my fourth book but first novel, Brilliant Charming Bastard, on October 29th. Over the course of those four books, I’ve worked with a small publisher, a medium publisher, and have gone Indie for the last two books. If you’ve ever published a book by whatever method, you know that the lead-up to launching a book is by turns exhilarating, exasperating, and exhausting.
The exhilaration comes from seeing something become tangible that you’ve carried around in your head for years. Some have likened writing and publishing a book to the process of pregnancy and giving birth, and I get it. There is such excitement: From other authors who read an advance copy and give you a lovely review, and from friends eager to see the big event come to pass. And then there is that moment when you open the box from your first print run and see your book and hold it in your hands. Wow.
The exasperation of publishing a book comes from the seemingly endless last-minute edits, and the almost infinite number of tiny decisions required for the publishing process.
The exhaustion happens because even when you feel done with your book, your book isn’t done with you. The comedienne Jean Carroll once said that the thing about having a baby is after you have it you still have it—and it’s the same with a novel. Writing the book and even proofreading the galleys is only the beginning. Whether you publish Indie or traditional, the second big job of a writer is what anti-ageism advocate Ashton Applewhite calls the endless book flogging. These days, marketing is just as big a commitment as the writing itself. It was not ever thus; I remember the days when writers were pampered like royalty on tours organized by the big New York publishing houses. Of course, those pampered writers were almost uniformly white men; not all change is bad.
And let’s face it: compared with many writers I have zero to complain about. My partner (who is, I hasten to add, one of those very white males who would have been feted by a big publisher had he written a book forty years ago) decided to teach himself indie publishing just so he could publish my books. Can you imagine that? Wrestling with online publishing tools and online booksellers just to do your partner that enormous favor? I am incredibly lucky he took this on to publish the ebook The Erotic Pandemic Ball and is expanding to include a print version as well as an ebook for Brilliant Charming Bastard. Not to mention, he was in marketing before he retired and is helping me with that too. I am one lucky writer.
So, October and November will be busy months, as was September. What keeps me going is remembering why I wrote this book: To tell the story of three successful women in their sixties, and how vivid and juicy their love lives are, and how they come together to invent something new that will help our struggling planet.
There is a long line of stories about the power of three women together. First Wives Club
is one, and The Witches of Eastwick is another. I would argue that, in a sense, The Wizard of Oz is yet another such story. I’ve always thought that Dorothy’s three supporters, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion, were different aspects of Dorothy herself: Her brains, her loving tenderness, her strength. Her journey to Oz is a journey of self-discovery and she claims her true self through her companions. Even the three Gray Sisters of Greek mythology who share one eyeball belong on this list. It’s a fine tradition I aspire to expand upon.
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