Day 4 of publishing Me Here Without You Now

Me Here Without You Now is pretty much finished, edited, and I’ve ordered a cover from an artist I found on TikTok. The editor (the first person to read it apart from me) said she loved it, so that gives me hope. Watched and read all about self-publishing, I think I have a pretty good idea of what that entails. I need to get that ISBN number because I don’t want the Amazon one, which means I need to start my own company. I don’t know. I’m going to try out traditional publishing, just because I don’t want to trouble myself with the ISBN number. It would be so great to not do everything on my own too. Can’t imagine what it’s like to actually have an agent and a publishing company in your corner. I’ve found a couple Irish publishing companies and one that just spoke to me. When I read about them on their website, I just felt like we could click. I have emailed them with my query and they were very polite in their response so I’m just hoping they don’t break my heart. “Please, make my dream come true,” she whispered. I can’t really imagine emailing a hundred different publishing companies, for one, there are so many that I know would not be interested in my book. The others that might be need me to have an agent, so have to look into that. Think that will be hard. Will give it a go, one query a day, have to remind myself that this is a process and take it as such. Trying to stay active on TikTok, posting short snippets of my book, videos about writing, jokes about writing. I have over 1000 of followers, which I’ve gained in a little over a month, so that’s something, right? As far as I can see on TikTok, I think the writers, readers on there are pretty much all into YA and fantasy books, there’s definitely not a lot of GenX representation. I still think (a better word would be hope) my generation is also doing some reading and will be eventually interested in my book when it’s out there. If it is out there.

There are definitely days when I seriously think about deleting everything, deleting this website, my TikTok account, when my imposter syndrome kicks in. I think I’ll have to give myself a deadline and just give it all until then. Also in terms of how long I am going to hope for getting traditionally published and then trying to get self-published. “I don’t want to self-publish,” she said. I’m not ready to set that date now, though.

Waiting on Outlander Season 7. Have bought the An Echo in the Bone Outlander book which it is based on. Have started reading it, got lost with the information overload, read a synonpsis of it, now powering through it once again. It’s an amazing book, I could never put together even a chapter (possibly a paragraph or two) of what Diana Gabaldon has written. Then to think that this is her eight, ninth time doing it; it’s simply unbelievable. So much so that every time I read a chapter, I again think about deleting this website, the TikTok account, everything. Will have to come up with a deadline and someone along the way will tell me if my book is shit. “Please, don’t tell me my book is shit,” she whispered.