The Cold Minds is out, in bookstores and online; it's even a Kindle book on Amazon. And I'm thrilled! Or so my friends keep reminding me.
And actually I am. A second novel published—that always seemed like an even more distant dream than the first. And to make it even better, book 3 of the Hidden Worlds series, The Dark Reaches, is well underway.
But . . . it's happening again. Something I never expected, and nobody warned me about.
A few days after The Hidden Worlds was published, I went over to the Oregon coast for a week of vacation with my family, my parents, and my brother and his girlfriend. And just about all of them were reading The Hidden Worlds for the first time. I found that even on a sunny balcony with a breathtaking view of the ocean, it was completely impossible to relax while everyone else out there was reading my book.
In fact, it was a little hard to breathe properly at times. (Not to mention the razzing I got over page 138. Hoo boy.)
I worked for years to write a saleable novel, worked for months with my editor's help to revise and polish it after it was sold, enjoyed the whole production process, exulted the first time I saw the book on the "New in Paperback" rack at Borders. But I never realized what it would mean until that moment on the balcony. People who knew me in contexts very far removed from SF adventure fiction. Relatives, friends, my husband's co-workers, my children's friends and their parents—people were reading my book. And I knew that when they finished, they'd tell me what they thought.
And . . . that was a very naked feeling.
But, to be honest—I wouldn't trade it for anything.
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7 comments:
Sounds like a very heady time! Congratulations!
Now I want to know what's on page `38! You should make that the cornerstone of your promotional campaign!
oops, meant to type 138!
I can't wait for book 3! I just finished book 2 and am amped up for more! (this will teach me to get into a series that has less then 5 books out! I read them too fast! and my copy came in only two days ago!!)
Heather, let's just say that page 138 was the beginning of a scene that I had never particularly imagined my mother reading . . . at least while I was writing it. Getting published is educational to more than just the writer.
Lexie, thanks! I certainly hope The Dark Reaches (I can't help thinking of it as that, though the title may change) will be even more fun than the first two. I'm certainly having a lot of fun writing it!
As for the meltdown, I just reread Cold Minds, finally, straight through, and it worked. Phew. I must learn to have more confidence. Though maybe that's not a skill that comes naturally to writers?
in HS my creative writing teacher (Mr. Bunce, he was awesome I love the man and wish he didn't retire) would say 'a confident writer is a writer I won't read'. don't know why, but I guess he had his reasons. Mr. Bunce was always saying things like that in class.
I think its better to be worried about your work. If you think its perfect and can't be improved upon then why write anything else? You can't top perfection right?
Mr. Bunce is right, in principle, of course.
But it's important to be able to recognize problems in what you write. That's really not the same as a lack of confidence; it's the road to getting better.
However, I think an essential trick of writing is knowing when it's good enough. I've learned that it's perfectly possible to wreck a piece of writing by working too hard on it!
Fyi, I interviewed Tia Nevitt of Fantasy Debut and she gave you a shout out!
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