Last year, when I started this whole writing adventure, I wanted to do everything right. The right stories, the right words, the right technology, and the right distribution.

I had five books planned for the Sleeping Dogs series, one book for each member of the band. For some reason, when I posted the first book for sale on Amazon, I couldn’t figure out how to make it say that it would be book 1 of 5. Until I thought ” I should make listings for the other books”. It was brilliant. Until it wasn’t.

When I put in the books, I also put in preorder dates. If you don’t know what that is, it just means that you can order a book before it releases officially. But for the writer, it’s a pretty solid deadline. You need to have your book done in time for that sale date.

Well, when I first put the books in, I mixed two of them up, got the order wrong. No problem, I thought, I can just switch them around. Except when I tried to do that I wound up with two books with the same pre-order date. Yikes!

I had to push one of them back by a couple of months, but Amazon only lets you postpone a release once, and only for thirty days. Which of course makes sense. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint people who had placed a pre-order.

Amazon gave me a one time exemption from the penalty for postponing more than once and I was able to keep my preorder creation capabilities. Even so, I barely made my deadline for the release of Book 4. Like, made it by the skin of my teeth, thanks only to the kindness of the Amazon employee who happened to answer my email that day.

So now, here I am again, struggling to make my deadline, only this time, if I don’t make it, there will be no reprieve. Some people say the ability to create pre-orders doesn’t matter until you’re a much bigger author but I like the idea that people can order before a release. I like pre-ordering books I’m looking forward to because I have the worst memory and would forget otherwise. I imagine that at least some other people have to the be same way, right?

The hard part I’m dealing with right now is that these characters aren’t talking to me the way I’d like them too. They’re not really interested in going the way I want the story to go, so things are getting a little out of control.

Will I finish the story in time for the release? Or will I have to forfeit my ability to create pre-orders for a whole year? If you’ve been kind enough to place a preorder for Way off Base, thank you. I appreciate you so much. If you’ve been waiting for release day, thank you also. I appreciate you so much.

Thanks for reading this rant. I’m sure I’ll make the deadline, I’m just being a whiny baby because I’m sick right now

Talk soon,

Chantal

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