Silly me, I thought writing and publishing went like this:
1. Write a book.
2. Celebrate publication.
3. Write the next book.
Spoiler Alert: It does not go like that.
It goes like this:
1 Write the story.
2. Rewrite the story.
3. Rewrite the story again
4. Edit the story like your life depends on getting it right.
5. Join a critique group and ask them to tear your story apart.
6. Recover from step 5 (knowing they really did save you from crap reviews, but still...).
7. Rewrite the story... again, and maybe several more agains.
8. Edit, edit, edit, and never shut the lid on your computer because typos breed when you do that.
9. Hire a professional editor and wait.
10. Drive your editor crazy, begging for mark-ups
11. Send your editor flowery emails and possibly actual gifts.
12. Receive the edits and briefly think about putting your manuscript in a burn barrel and setting it on fire.
13. Rewrite the story.
14. Submit, submit, submit...
15. Entertain the possibility that you are in some sort of submission groundhog day.
16. Hear that a publisher might be interested.
17. Wonder if the person who sent the letter in step 16 died or was abducted by aliens.
18. Get another letter JUST like the one in step 16, but with no indication that anyone remembers ever talking to you... EVER.
19. Finally receive a contract.
20. Suspect that the contract is a cruel joke perpetrated by one of your supposed-friends.
21. Sign the contract and know in your heart-of-hearts nothing will ever come of it.
22. Hear from the design team, and answer back SO fast, your reply actually goes back in time and arrives before the email from the design team ever went out.
23. Never hear from the design team again. Or at least not until you've abandoned all hope.
24. Receive your cover and the corrected manuscript with a request that you authorize "go for launch."
25. Launch!!!
26. Realize you should have been promoting your book, or at least planning a promotion campaign long before you ever wrote it.
27. Promote, promote, promote and hope the book actually becomes a thing because friends and family are privately calling you the girl who cried book.
28. Promote, network, promote, network...
Book one is finally in the world, but two is blowing raspberries and threatening to erase itself, and three has bags packed and is shopping for a better writer.
To everyone who read and/or reviewed Shadow Runner, I am beyond grateful. You made me "real" even though Imposter Syndrome tells me it was a fluke.
To aspiring writers, ignore all of the above.
Besides, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel at last. Or... is that an on-coming train?