Cover Me

Well, folks. We are drawing near to the finish line. Think more turtle, less Sha'Carri Richardson, but nevertheless...

The Beta reading process took a lot longer than I planned for, but it's been a good experience. For the most part, the book is resonating with the people who've read it so far, which is enormously gratifying.

I am awaiting the first pass on the cover design, and I just got notes back from my sensitivity reader. I signed up for an account on Draft2Digital, which is the platform I'll use to send it out into the world. I still need to do a last pass revision and the proofread, then I hope I can put it all together and set up a launch date. I'd also like to let it spend time on NetGalley, or a similar space, where folks could read for free and hopefully review it ahead of time. There seem to be very few guarantees with this process, and I'm honestly not sure whether I'll do it.

There's a LOT of advice out in the world about how to best do this. Idle searching the other day led me to a list 150 items long (build a youtube platform! guest star on relevant podcasts!). Readers, when I tell you that I am unlikely to do even one of those things, perhaps you'll see what a long shot this has always been. Sort of fitting/funny/frustrating that so much of the book is about how badly I want to be found, picked out of the crowd. I don't think this is an intentional corollary, even subconsciously, just a random twist of fate. I also write about how, as an actor, it doesn't really matter if you can act if you don't have all those other skills you need -- basic business stuff, plus the fortitude for the endless auditions, how good you are at the schmoozing part, etc. This is just another version of that. I'm not going to join BookTok. I'm not even on Goodreads. Sigh.

ANYway. I'm not letting all that get in the way here. I am very close to having Done the Thing. I'll worry about the rest later.