My novel, Loving Christy is now a reality!

I know that because there are three boxes of books stacked up in my living room waiting to meet  their new owners. I am slowly, but surely, distributing the books to those who pre-ordered them. (You can go to Amazon.com and download it to your Kindle, or buy it at either Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com.)

Evidence of the positive feedback I’ve received from people who have read Loving Christy on already can be found at the Amazon web page that features my book. (Just type in Loving Christy.)

How does it feel to be a “real author,” one with a tangible book to my name?  Truthfully,I have mixed feelings about it.

Writing a book is not for sissies—it’s really hard work and you have to be willing to accept criticism—lots of it. Before you begin writing a book, you must commit to it, because you’ll live that book every waking hour of your day. The book will literally occupy most of your thoughts. You’ll spend hours putting words on paper, rereading them, rewriting them and then agonizing over them. You’ll spend days and weeks and months making your characters come to life.

Then there’s the research. Writing about a place or time that you have never experienced requires extensive research to capture the flavor of your setting.

The plot must make sense—it must be plausible and have enough action and believable events to move the story along. In modern writing there is no greater sin than breaking the commandment to “show, not tell.” That means using dialogue and action to let the story unfold, instead of making statements.

Did I mention that you have to do all of this using fresh language and not relying on cliches?

And you must write at least 70,000 (yes—thousand) words to even try to market the book.

After you have labored on the book, then the real fun begins—trying to get an agent. Writing query letters are a skill, and to make it even more interesting, every agent has different criteria. If you don’t follow his or her criteria to the letter, you can expect that the agent won’t spend even 60 seconds reading your cover letter. All of your hard work is destined for the “circular file.”

Finally,  you have an agent or a publisher!

The real work begins now…

An editor is assigned who will comb your book for flaws and faults—that you must correct.

Eventually, you’ll receive a draft that you must read to find any flaws that slipped though. After that, another draft arrives and  you read the novel again, to make sure as many corrections were made as possible.

Somewhere along the way, a cover is designed which (hopefully) you will like.

Finally the day comes when several boxes of books (which you have paid for in advance) arrive on your doorstep . You look at them and realize that now you must sell them…you must create buzz about your novel!

All by yourself.

Then a magical thing happens, someone reads your book and sends an email, writes a review on Amazon.com, or tells you how much they liked the book.

And like an addict looking for a fix, you find the half-finished manuscript you started. And you begin writing the next novel.

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Thanks to Ginger Allain for the wonderful author page she designed for me.

You can visit my author page at: http://www.squidoo.com/loving-christy

You can order copies of Loving Christy from me at kglascott230@gmail.com.