Tag: reading

The Night Before

Today was slow in the way that days are slow when your brain is running at approximately four hundred kilometres an hour underneath the surface of everything. Outwardly: not much. Inwardly: a complete disaster, but a functional one.

I cannot decide if I am proud or terrified. Both, I think. Mostly both, simultaneously, with no clear winner.

Here is the thing that is sitting with me tonight. I come from fanfic. A long history in fanfic, years of it, and if you know that world then you know exactly what I mean when I say that fanfic readers are ruthless. Not all of them, and not without reason — they care deeply and they know their subjects and they will find the thing you got wrong at two in the morning on a Tuesday and they will have feelings about it in the comments. I have been on the receiving end of that particular flavour of feedback and it leaves a mark.

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And now I am putting original work into a world that contains those same readers, and every instinct I have developed over years of that experience is quietly losing its mind.

I have been juggling these boys in words since 2018. I have done everything I can short of actually living their lives for them. I have researched and rewritten and edited and refined and had the whole thing pulled apart and put back together, and I still lie awake wondering if there is something I’ve missed, something someone will find, something that will give anyone a reason to drop negativity on my babies.

I know, logically, that I cannot control that. I know it. The logic is right there, very clear, completely accessible, and absolutely no comfort whatsoever.

But. The websites are functional. Not perfect — I want to be transparent about the not perfect — but functional, which is considerably better than where we were forty-eight hours ago. The newsletter welcome chains for both currently publishing authors are finished and in place. The things that needed doing got done, even on a slow day, even while quietly freaking out.

Tomorrow it goes into the wild.

I’m going to stop chewing my nails now. Or try. We’ll see how that goes.

I did a thing

I actually did the thing.

Almost Yours Again is listed on Amazon. As of tonight, it is a real book that real people can find, click on, and buy. I have been staring at the listing for the last twenty minutes like it might disappear if I look away.

I don’t entirely know how to feel about this. Proud? Terrified? Both at the same time in a way that is making my chest do something weird? Yes. All of that. Simultaneously.

Here’s the thing about writing for as long as I have — and I have been at this for a very long time, long enough that I’m not going to put the number in writing because it will make me feel ancient — you get comfortable living inside the work. The writing is yours. The characters are yours. The story happens in your head and on your screen and it belongs entirely to you, and that is a deeply comfortable place to be. Nobody can tell you it isn’t good enough when it’s still just a document on your hard drive.

Uploading it to Amazon tonight felt like opening my front door and shoving one of my cats out into the street and saying off you go then, make your own way in the world.

(For the record, none of my actual fifteen cats are going anywhere. They are all fine. This is a metaphor.)

The book is Avery Beckett’s — that’s the name on the cover — but the sleep I’m going to lose over it is entirely mine. Every writer who has ever hit publish knows this particular brand of stomach-drop. You spend all this time making something, and then you let it go, and then it’s just… out there. In the world. Without you.

What if nobody finds it?

What if somebody finds it and hates it?

What if somebody finds it and loves it and wants more, and then I have to actually deliver more? (Okay, that one I can handle. I have notes. I have so many notes.)

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. And tonight I did it. The book exists in the world in a way it didn’t exist this morning, and that is not nothing. That is actually something quite enormous.

And just in case that wasn’t enough chaos for one brain, I should mention that Avery Beckett is only one of three active pseudonyms currently taking up residence in my head. Three. Distinct. Voices. All with their own worlds, their own characters, their own very strong opinions about where their stories are going. You might think that sounds confusing. You could possibly be right.

What this means in practice is that the Avery universe alone currently runs to forty books. Forty. The first ten are written, edited, and ready to go — which means I have somehow committed to one book a month for the next ten months. I’m genuinely unsure whether that’s impressive or certifiable. Possibly both. Probably both.

So. Almost Yours Again is out there now, finding its feet, looking for its people. I’m sitting here with a cup of tea going cold beside me and a publishing schedule that would make a sensible person lie down in a dark room. Proud and terrified in equal measure.

Mostly proud.

If you happen to find the book out there in the wild—thank you. For looking. For clicking. For even considering it. That matters more than I can quite put into words yet.

The cats love me unconditionally and ask no questions about release schedules. This is very important right now.

Ask me again in the morning.