This was a tough weekend for me. I sat down at my laptop on Friday with every intention of completing the formatting of my manuscript so I could complete the process of making my book available in paperback format. By Saturday night I was a crying, hyperventilating mess. (Big hugs to my sweet husband who sat patiently listening and rubbing my back.)

I won’t bore you with the minute details, but basically page numbers and spacing became gigantic issues that I couldn’t seem to resolve no matter what I did. Each time I tried a new tactic and reuploaded my manuscript into the previewer it looked the exact same. And each time it took a piece of my sanity.

After midnight on Saturday, and somewhere around my 25th attempt at uploading it I decided I no longer wanted to be a writer. The upload problems were frustrating, but they were more of a final straw. Writing is a beautiful, magical process with the power to connect people and spark imaginations. When I decided I wanted to become a writer, or more accurately, when I decided I wanted writing to be my thing I had a very specific vision in my mind. And this was not it.

I pictured a simple, cozy little cottage-core life. There I’ve got soup warming in the crockpot and bread baking in the oven. I pour myself a little cup of coffee and sit at my desk in front of a window with drifts of snow passing by outside. My cat warms my feet as I tip-tap away on my laptop writing the next great story. Eventually a publisher becomes interested in my book and it becomes available in sweet little local bookstores. I thought this dream was achievable simply because I wasn’t looking for best-seller fame or even to make a full-time living. But that was wishful thinking.

Let me be clear – it’s not the occasional rejection letter that got to me. It was everything else. Writing, being a writer, is not just about writing. In fact writing and editing are a smaller factor in the experience than we’d like them to be. To be a writer (and get your stories read) you have to build a marketing presence on social media, post regularly about things related to writing, build a mailing list, design your book covers, learn how to professionally query, learn how to professionally edit, learn how to professionally format for both digital and paperback/hardcover and you have to do it all with little to no financial resources for the proper software, instead relying on free programs and offers of help, all while you improve your writing chops. This was not the cozy writing life I envisioned.

I went to bed Saturday, having tossed the proof copy of my book across my office in frustration, fully convinced this dream was dead. And then, because I have trouble letting things go, I woke up Sunday morning, made some chili, took my coffee into the office with my cat and eventually figured out my page numbers and spacing problems.

All that is to say: the paperback version of Fat Phobia is available now on Amazon! Please buy it and help restore some of my sanity. If you do, make sure to leave a review and tell me how much you love the spacing.