What it like to be me…

It’s so funny, when you start writing,  it’s mostly to entertain yourself. You have to get these crazy characters and their stories out of your head, they become your escape. At first you try to tell people about scenes in your head, but after the third of fourth person edges away from you, you realize maybe the things you think isn’t exactly normal. So you make the decision to take a huge chance and share these stories with someone else. You want more than anything, yet fear above all else the feedback from another human being. You feel completely naked and exposed. You’re not just sharing a story you wrote, but putting your very soul on display. Others will be able to walk the sacred corridors of your mind and they are able to see, and judge what goes on in your head. If you’re extremely lucky someone who decides if you can be shared with the world or not says yes and you become published. But then a whole new set of anxieties begin.

You look at your baby, the object of hours of love and painstaking crafted perfection and you hate it. What were you thinking? You second guess every inflected tone, word choice, scene, character and the meaning of life. You fall into a bottomless self hate spiral until someone snaps you back to reality. After hours and days of editing you hesitantly submit it back to your editors and then immediately open up the word document you just sent them and begin to find more errors. Unable to look at the screen without feeling like a complete failure you decide that its time for booze and coffee, or coffee and chocolate, or chocolate and booze, or …..screw it you make a Godiva and Kahlua infused alcoholic nectar like beverage and try to drown your feelings of doubt and self loathing.

Weeks later you go through one more round of edits and submit the Final product back to the editors. If you’re a complete Masochist you open up your word document again and start re-reading.

Next up is release day. You lose your shit.

You don’t get any sleep because you just know people are going to hate it. You agonize over your choices for the title,, that slight twist you put in Chapter 3,,, that Doctor Who reference.

By 8am you gave already given up on coffee and are receiving Sugar Free Red Bull intravenously. Your eyes are gritty, vision blurred, but you can mumble “No I’m okay.” You refuse to eat because why give your stomach ammo?

Then a tiny speck of light appears like a beacon of hope in the tumultuous abyss you have sunk yourself.

An email pops into your mailbox- “A review has been posted to MER” You take a deep breath and read. You take another deep breath and smile. They liked it. But, that’s just one person. Surely the majority of people are going to hate it and demand that Facebook remove you so that they don’t have to look at your profile anymore, because how dare you think you’re a writer missy!

Then you get another glowing review, and another and another!

They all not only like it, they freaking love it! You don’t get to appreciate this heavenly feeling because you haven’t slept yet, so you crash with a smile on your face and your brain begins to tease you with ideas for the next fifty books.

This in an extremely condensed and abbreviated version of what I go through every time a book is released. Its hard to truly capture the hours and hours and hours of agony one experiences in bringing a book to life. And every author is different. The cycle described above was my life from August of last year through Jan 1st of this year as I released five books in my Kindred of Arkadia series. I pushed myself to the limits to get my Christmas book done on time. For those who have read the series, you know what a pivotal book that turned out to be. It also showed me exactly what I was capable of and how much the support of my readers could do.

Their excitement for the next book carried me forward on days where I couldn’t keep my main character’s name straight in my head since I was, at any one point working on two sets of edits and writing a whole new book. I can’t tell you the number of times I typed Ashby when it was Sebastian, or Sebastian when it should have been Felix!

Now it’s February and I’m in a blissful daze. I woke up this morning and of course checked my Facebook. I was stunned to discover that I had won in four of the five categories I had been nominated for in the 2014 Erotic Menage Romance Fan’s Award. The site hosting the awards is run by Mary’s Menage Whispers. It’s a wonderful blog ran by a woman dedicated to reading and the authors that she reads. It has become a very respected source for reviews and to find new books. So you can imagine that I was simply grateful just to been amongst those who had been nominated. There were so many amazing writers nominated that just being listed with them was exciting.

I received awards for Best Shifters, Best Straight Characters, Best Gay/Lesbian Characters and Best in Paranormal.

It’s awards like this that makes the anxiety, depression, despair, worry, and gut wrenching fear associated with every book written and released, well worth it. Not just because it’s an award, but to me it’s a visible badge of how much my readers care, and that means more to me than anything.