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The Faceplant Launch
The first book in my new series, Scandal, came out and it was the best launch I’ve had to date. Well, if we’re being honest, it was the only launch I’ve had to date. My entire Huntress series launched with maybe a Facebook post of “So…this happened” but I had no idea how to really launch a book back then other than punt it out there and hope. As a result, I get a book done and go faceplant somewhere for six months while the next one is brewing, growing, and calling my name. 2017 wasn’t supposed to be the year I faceplanted and couldn’t get back up, but hey, guess what?
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Rolling With The Punches
I launched Scandal (Scions Book 1) at the very end of March and was on track to launch Fallout (Scions Book 2) in May when something that is not disaster struck. Mr. Athena’s job went from being stable to “could end at any moment” which is indeed a personal disaster, but then Mother Nature was like, “Hold my beer, I’ll show you some disaster,” cracked her knuckles and my country simultaneously sank underwater, caught on fire and got blown off the map, (also what happened to our political landscape, but that’s beyond the scope of this post. Or the understanding of scholars for many years to come). So the constructing of fictional conflicts for this dystopian sci-fi sort of took a backseat to a reality that was lobbing far more dystopia in my direction than I could make up.
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Pianos Don’t Fly
I confess, I did not really realize what was going on until my chief beta and developmental editrix cracked her whip and told me, “Athena, you have spent the past year and maybe more dodging pianos that have been falling out of the sky and onto your head, girl! No wonder your writing slowed way down!” See, that’s the other thing I like to do–I’m much more sensitive to other people’s stresses and challenges while I busily and casually disregard my own.
I tend to feel embarrassed about work I’ve done. I’m extroverted as hell about other people’s work, and stuff I like that was made by other people, but I’ve always been hesitant to talk about my own creations. My inner introvert puts her foot down and pulls a Greta Garbo. “I vahnt to be ah-lohn now.” (Speaking of which, did you know
her Manhattan apartment is for sale? Hashtag “a room of one’s own Virginia Woolf” goals, amIrite?)
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Eating Dirt Is Nutritious
So I didn’t want to spend most of 2017 gumming the floor and looking around for teeth, but I did, and it’s okay, because dirt has antibodies! And the floor, at least, is horizontal, which means you can use it for napping. And because I wasn’t hurtling forward down the highway at breakneck speed in a go-cart that had no brakes and never even saw the inside of an inspection station, I had some time to look around and see that I was not alone in my faceplanted-ness. All around me, other writers were dropping like flies from burnout. But things grow in ashes and dirt, and what grew out of our ashes and dirt was the new, green growth of why many of us went Indie in the first place. Because it’s all about the stories, and getting to tell them the way we need to, for the people who need to read them. Going forward into 2018, I’m moving out of Pianoland and back to Writerville by any means necessary.
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