PUBLISHING IS A LESSON IN HUMILITY
I’ve been told I’m smart.
No, seriously. Some call me a rocket scientist.
Stop laughing. I’m not kidding. I work in sensors for propulsion systems on everything from crew capsules to satellites to some cool things I can’t…you know…explain without some nerdy technical jargon.
I have a pretty gnarly grasp of language and art too. If you look at my porfolio in my office you’ll find all kinds of stick figures and great quotes by Rocky the Squirrel and Felix the Cat and Deadpool.
Seriously, though. It seems none of that matters when trying to publish a book. The industry is rife with pitfalls, traps, snares, scams, vagabonds, theives, and now…artificial intelligence. If you think disinformation is bad on the 24-hr news cycle, try publishing. Even the information that is accurate is presented in a way that almost ensures the inexperienced with stumble and fuck it up. (Oooo, you said ‘fuck’.)
No I didn’t. You did if you read this aloud. I only wrote it.
If you are following along, haven’t tuned out to my rantings, and are interested in the real reason for this blog post, thanks for letting me get all the above off my chest. When I first released THE GROWING DARKNESS I fell into all manner of trouble. I had to undo and redo and in some cases, accept that I’d done something wrong that was unfixable without significant negative side effects. The last few months have been no different. In fact, they’ve been a bit crazy. Honest truth? It’s been a struggle to keep up. You are likely aware that a new novella is coming this month. GARROW’s BASIN is ready and scheduled for publication on MAY 29th. Or…well…it was.
Seems Amazon decided that I had no clue what I was doing and released it yesterday. Surprise! (That’s directed at me.) I learned from my previous experience that if you use Ingram Spark and Amazon, you have to release on Ingram first and then Amazon separately (and more importantly, not the other way around). I had everything ready to go. Nothing published. But then I wanted to order advanced copies of GARROW’S BASIN to send out physical ARCs so I released it on Ingram and held off on clicking the final “submit” button on Amazon.
But releasing on Ingram somehow placed it on Amazon and now the whole mess is muddled.
Again.
Like the first time. Only different. And likely, impossible to fix without disasterous negative side effects like rectal bleeding, vomiting, head aches, nausea, and a bit of alcohol poisoning. At least Barnes & Noble put it on pre-order and respected the release date. Amazon probably thinks I’m the idiot and mucked it up. Who am I to say. It probably is something I did. No. It definitely is. I just can’t seem to figure out what that is. It’s an enigma. It’s a moon shot only I forgot about particle impact on the sensitive electronics and the Single Event Lockout has occured. No hard reset to clear the error. We are all systems go. We are up the creek but the paddle is stuck in my ass. (Oooo, he said another bad word.)
All this to say: second book in and I’m still clueless. I have no clue what I’m doing. Others have gone before me, blazed the trail, marked the turns, set landmarks, and they have been wildly successful at navigating this whole thing. Somehow I’ve mucked it up.
Again.
I’ve been told I’m smart.
Let’s be honest. There’s no signs of intelligent life over here. I need rescued. Hey, Marc Avery, send tacos!