Today is the day!! AUGUST 7TH. My debut novel, 100 Days of Sunlight, is officially RELEASED. (And I’m freaking out!) So today, in honor of this book launch and everything it means to me, I’m throwing a virtual party on this blog. *tosses confetti*
I’ve lost track of how many times I imagined this moment, dreaming about what it would feel like to finally be a published author and know that people all over the world are reading my book – this story that was literally nothing but an idea 2 years ago!! It’s such a surreal experience, I’m not sure I can adequately put it into words. But I’m going to try.
In today’s post, I’m going to throw lots of confetti around, yes – but I’m also going to talk about what it feels like to be a debut author, embarking on this publishing adventure for the first time ever. And if you’d like to watch a video of me flailing, that’s here in this post too!!
Let’s get the party started.
The celebration video
Before we dive into the post, here’s the celebration video I mentioned! Basically it consists of me flailing and lauhging and crying (yep) and rambling about the book and how amazing it is to finally be here, giving 100 Days of Sunlight to the world.
How it feels to be a published author
Publishing a book is a lot of work. And it’s even more work when you’re an indie author and captain of your own ship. You have to oversee and, most of the time, do everything. From cover design to formatting to ARC readers, it’s easy to get so busy with the technical side of things, you sometimes forget about the emotional side of things… like the fact that you are taking a piece of yourself (we call our books our “babies” for a reason) and sending it out into the world to be consumed like a product.
That’s probably the craziest part about publishing a book. Because it is literally a piece of your heart and soul – a big piece. And you’re wrapping it up in a neat little binding with a pretty cover and letting the world read it, judge it, and give their opinion on it. Y-I-K-E-S.
The publishing process is not all sunshine and rainbows. There are difficult times, long hours, deadlines to meet, back-and-forth formatting adjustments, problems that crop up everywhere like renegade weeds in the garden of your Publishing Dreams. But challenges make you stronger, better, and smarter.
The emotional journey
As I mentioned a minute ago, publishing a novel is not just a test of your technical and business skills. It’s a test of your confidence and emotional strength. Publishing a novel is an incredibly vulnerable, gutsy, disarming experience. Like I said, your book is a piece of you! And letting the world see that is difficult.
Throughout the process of publishing this book, I’ve learned so much about myself as a creator and as a human being. Between self-promotion and marketing and seeing readers’ reviews, there has been so much noise running through my head, constantly. It has spun me in circles at times and shown me places where I can grow and learn. It has helped me return to the place of the student – still learning about myself and how to best take care of my emotional wellbeing. How to show my work and myself more respect and affirmation.
I know I’m speaking about all of this very vaguely right now, but that’s because I don’t feel ready or able to expound on the ways my publishing experience has shaped me – it’s still shaping me. I’m still growing and learning and creating habits that are more intentional and respecting of my mental health. So I can’t say much in the way of “being helpful”.
But one thing, I can assure you, has helped me inexplicably:
Remembering the beginning
I’m a super future-oriented person. Sometimes this gets in my way. I dwell so much in the future, I scarcely stop to reminisce the past. But I think the past can teach us valuable lessons about growth – it can help us to acknowledge how much we’ve grown in the right directions, and perhaps how we’ve grown in the wrong directions.
When the publishing process became more demanding and time-consuming, I started to think so much about the future, I’d forgotten how I felt in the past. Until one day I found an old journal of mine that I kept during November of 2017, when I was writing the first draft of 100 Days of Sunlight. I opened it at an entry wherein I talked about how much I loved this story – how inspired I felt as I wrote it, and how it had completely stolen my heart. This was back before anyone even knew the book existed.
As I stood in my room, reading that journal entry, I started crying. I could remember how happy I was with the story, how much I loved the characters and the premise and the whole vibe. I was never happier with my book than I was that day.
See, I had become so “busy” with the publishing process, I started looking at 100 Days of Sunlight as just a book, a piece of content to be packaged and published ASAP… I had lost sight of how much this book meant to me. How much I loved it.
In the end, your book is yours. It is a piece of your heart, and it matters to you. That’s the most important thing. How you felt when you created it, before anyone else read it or gave their opinion on it. Remember the beginning. This moment, right now. This is everything.
Where can you find 100 Days of Sunlight?
Everywhere books are sold online!! Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, or your retailer of choice. I can’t say for sure when books will be available in brick and mortar stores, or where. A lot of these decisions are up to the individual bookseller and I may not be able to give exact locations of bookstores that are selling my book.
If you want to hold off on ordering the book and see if you win a giveaway instead, go for it!! I’m hosting a giant giveaway here on this blog (open all month!) and a lot of the blog tour participants are hosting giveaways as well, including Vinny from Artsy Draft! Also there is a monthly giveaway on the book’s website.
Stay tuned
More novels are coming in the future!! Not that I’m already thinking about the next thing, but… I kind of am. (I HEAR YOU! ABBIE, STOP.) I won’t breathe a word about my next book yet, but I will say that you can expect me to be one of those authors who, once she published one book, CAN’T STOP. 😉 I’m so excited to see what the future holds – for 100 Days of Sunlight, and every book yet to come.
Let’s talk!
On a scale of 1 to ASDFGHJKL, how excited are you for 100 Days of Sunlight?! Have you read it yet or is it on your TBR pile?? Have you entered the giveaway? If not, you should totally do that. 😉
