Amazon has been treating me very well of late. Even though the downloads have been tapering off, they have still not died entirely. As a matter of fact, some time yesterday the combined downloads of all of my books on Amazon.com crossed the 25,000 mark! Granted, the vast majority of those downloads are free copies of Book 1, but that does not diminish the fact that tens of thousands of people have my book in their digital libraries. This is a very big deal for me. I realize that most of you out there would suggest that it would be a big deal for any indie author, but people who know me personally can appreciate how monumental this is to me specifically.
I am intensely self-conscious about the things that I create. I always have been. The books in particular were a source of great embarrassment for me for reasons I’m still not able to fully articulate. On the day that I self-published, the number of people who were fully aware that I’d written a book, let alone a trilogy, was in the single digits. I would agonize over whether or not to tell someone, and swear them to secrecy about it. Members of my immediate family didn’t know. Now there are thousands and thousands of people who have the book. That is simultaneously the most exciting and most terrifying outcome I could have imagined. To my great relief, the experience has been extremely positive. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been perfect. I’ve received some reviews that I’ve described as psychologically ruinous. (Evidently there is at least one person out there who would have liked to see all of my characters die in a fire.) Most people who share their thoughts, though, are encouraging and helpful. For the others, I’m slowly developing what I refer to as a “review callous.” Very slowly.
I very much doubt that I’m the only person who has poured countless hours into a project, then sat upon it for fear of failure. Consider this an example of what could happen if you take a chance.
Rather than spend a whole post patting myself on the back, though, let me give you an update on what’s going on. I’ve finished doing another revision of Book 3. In the next few weeks that will go live, and those interested can update. Since I’ve received comparatively few complaints about typos and the like on Jade and Bypass Gemini, I’ll put off doing additional revisions of them in order to focus on the current book I’m writing. I’m not usually in a hurry to finish a book, but I am extremely interested in getting Sci Fi Book 2 finished and published. When I’m selecting books to read, I always feel a lot better about trying a new author when I know that, if I like their stuff, there will be more where that came from. Thus, continuing the adventures of Lex, Karter, and Ma is my current priority, so that fellow series readers will know that it isn’t one and done.
That’s it for now. As always, thanks for reading.