Well. That was tougher than anticipated. Indie publishing is a wondrous thing, offering authors unprecedented control and freedom over our careers that we’ve not enjoyed as a group maybe ever. But it does have its lessons to teach us. One of those lessons is that a book launch is a process, rather than the event that it looks like from the outside. This can be both a good and a bad thing–an event-style launch is a fixed point in time with concentrated energy focused all at once. Like the initial moments of a rocket launch, there’s a lot of energy packed into a relatively small space, and in a condensed window of time. But a process-launch is that burst of energy, plus all the stuff that went before it–trucking the rocket to the launch pad, the guys in the short-sleeved dress shirts in Mission Control, the countdown, the weather-watching, the busy-ness running around even before you get the rocket pointed towards the stars. A process-launch is all the stuff that comes before the inital burn, the initial burn itself, plus all the stuff that comes after, too. The second-stage boosters, the breakaway, the trajectory thrusters and course corrections.

I’ve been struck by how closely aligned launching a book is to moving into Act Two of your life. It’s not an Event, it’s a Process. You’re never done when you think you are. Moving into Act Two isn’t just something that happens like the flip of a “place book on sale” switch. There are fits and starts, advances and retreats as you shed your old habits and attempt to adopt new. But without yet shedding your old ways of thinking, you can backslide back into an Act One role, only now you are less well-suited to the stage, and the set-pieces are looking a little unfamiliar. But you are gaining new ground, learning new lines and stage direction, and you are subject to wardrobe changes.

Stepping onto the stage after the sets have been moved and the curtain goes up is an event, but it’s an event supported by a process. And the process goes on.

You can find Rude Awakening’s buy links thus far here in this bit.ly bundle: http://bit.ly/WntrJack1