When will writing and publishing get easier?

by Christine Kling

Knight’s Cross, my latest Thomas & Mercer novel is now available for sale on Amazon. This is my seventh novel, but that doesn’t mean the release is any less fraught with anxiety. I have no idea whether people are going to like the book or not. It has been a year and a half since the last book in the series came out, and Knight’s Cross has not been given the huge launch that Dragon’s Triangle got by being a part of the Kindle First program. The new book has been out for four days now, and it has only received one review. In today’s world of publishing, books live or die by the number of reviews they get. I check the book ever few hours, and I feel like I’m watching my child’s head slip under water.

I love this book. In many ways this is a book of my heart. Wayne and I traveled Europe together doing the research for this book, he proposed to me on Malta, and I’ve dedicated the book to him. I wrote in the dedication that he proved to me I don’t have to live alone to write.

So what does it mean if this book fails? What if people hate the book? I tried to be daring, and I wrote a book with three different timelines. Was I crazy to try something so challenging?

This waiting and wondering makes me question everything.

Back in the days when I used to go out on the road and do talks and signings in bookstores, I was always terrified that no one would show up. And sometimes that did happen. But I survived. I kept on writing. And I kept telling myself that somehow I would find my audience.

Today I don’t do book signings much anymore, but I’m still terrified every time a new book is released, and I do keep asking myself, when will this get any easier? Will I always feel like a fraud and wonder if this is the time they are going to find out that I’m really not much of a writer? Is this going to be the book that ends my career? Or if this book doesn’t find it’s audience will I be able to soldier on and write another?

I don’t know if other writers go through this with every launch—and I don’t know if it’s wise to admit so publicly that I do. But I believe there are some unpublished authors who read this blog and maybe it’s okay, or even important, to let them know that whether it is the first book or the seventh, this feeling of putting your guts into a book and then sending it out into the world to be cheered or jeered at is something that never gets any easier. I would far rather face the job of clawing down a headsail on a heaving foredeck or standing a solo watch through a gale. It’s far easier to find the courage to do those things.

But this waiting and wondering about what the world will think about a book that took almost two years of my life to write?

That’s damn hard.

 

Fair winds!

Christine

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