Just because you throw me a bone doesn’t mean I have to catch it

Been lost in the weeds the last few weeks, first recovering from an existential crisis that came about after reading this blog post, specifically the last line and all that it implies. So I started watching videos with Christopher Hitchens and then reading about near-death experiences and now I’m here, still unsure of what I think, but leaning towards the belief there’s an afterlife, probably because I desperately want it to be true.

I got the proof of Forgotten April in the mail, and honestly, you’d think it would be a good moment to hold my book and all, but the self-doubt creeps in and the whole self-publishing stigma is still a stigma and whatever. And then I found 26 formatting errors (not typos, but formatting) and sent it back to my person to fix, which will delay releasing the paperback another three weeks most likely, which irks me, but I know as a self-pubbed author I have an even greater responsibility to put out error-free work because the buck stops here and there’s no one else to blame if there are mistakes and also because if I get brave enough, I want to send my book to this woman to review, even though she scares the living crap out of me because she stops reading once she counts fifteen mistakes and then she blogs about which page she stopped reading on.

I stupidly started a debate with someone about self-publishing who doesn’t know what the eff he’s talking about, and he reminded me of Donald Trump in terms of his arrogance, so I just stopped responding to his messages and feel better in a passive aggressive sort of way, especially since I’m writing about it here.

I’m finishing the draft of novel #2, which goes to my writers group and other beta readers next week. People will be getting me their feedback before July 4, and I’m taking the month of July to revise before handing it off to my copy editor. Then it’s lobbed back to me. And then I lob it to my proofreader. And then she sends it back to me and I read it one more time and will likely catch more stuff and have a nervous breakdown and then send it to the ebook converter dudes post Labor Day, with the hope that the whole kit and kaboodle will be live by mid October.

It’s also monsoon season in the Northeast, apparently.

How’s your May been?