HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY, STARSHIP ASS!!!

That’s right!

After more than twenty freakin’ years of writing stories… after countless workshops and online courses on the craft of writing… after numerous conferences and non-fiction books on book marketing…

The day has finally come… when at long last… I RELEASE MY DEBUT NOVEL!!!!!

*insert manic cackling*

But wait… didn’t I already publish some books?

Yes. Yes I did.

But all of those books were very short. And the longest was a collection of short stories. So still, technically, short. Ugh.

What in the HELL have I been doing for the last 20+ years then!?!?!

What an excellent question!

And the answer is:

A lot of flailing around trying to figure out what the hell I was doing.

A lot of writing things that were never shown to anyone (aside from my sister and BFF).

A lot writing fanfiction that was put online and thankfully, well-received, and also critiqued and improved.

A lot of reading craft books, as mentioned above, emailing my favorite authors (back in the day when email was new and they’d actually write you back), and going to workshops and conferences.

Going to college and getting married.

Working many various jobs.

Having a child.

Raising said child.

Learning about self-publishing.

Learning about branding and marketing and cover design and ebook formatting and market research.

And LLCs and sole proprietorships and taxes.

Learning how to be a professionally minded author.

Experimenting with various writing processes, failing at some, succeeding at others, trying again, and eventually creating a patchwork-quilt-process that works best for me.

So, in general, just doing a lot of stuffs. The good news is, of course, that by the time I finally got around to this DEBUT NOVEL actually going live and BEING PUBLISHED FOR REALZ AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I had gotten most of my crap writing out of the way and put in places no one will ever see. 🙂

That being the case, I’m quite proud of this DEBUT NOVEL of mine, despite it most definitely NOT being the novel I thought would be my debut novel over the last twenty years of dreaming about how my author career would go. (But then, the reality of my author career has never been anything even remotely like my childhood dreams about my author career…)

But that’s the thing. You gotta be open to awesome new opportunities when they pop up in life, not to mention have the self-awareness to recognize random happenings as actual new opportunities in the first place (and also, learn how to separate Shiny Object Syndrome from Actual New Opportunities, but more on that later). And that takes some practice… but I am happy to say I managed to recognize this opportunity when it came about, and now here I am!

What was this magical new opportunity, anyway?

Well, if you want to hear allllll the juicy details, you can listen to some of my recent podcast interviews! YES! ACK! I actually got to be interviewed on some podcasts about this DEBUT NOVEL! Eeep!

Cosmic Dragon – my co-writer Ethan and I spill the beans about our collaboration!

The Sample Chapter Podcast – I fly solo on this one and talk more about the book and then read my very favorite chapter to you! (With voices and everything! Hey, maybe I have a future as an audiobook narrator??? Um… nah.)

Sci Fi Shenanigans – Ethan and I team up again to discuss the book and dive into more detail on the science fiction aspects of it, everything from our aliens to technology, and more!

….But long story short, I happened to meet another scifi author at one of those aforementioned writing conferences, and then later he posted a hilarious book blurb meant to be a joke.

But I LOVED the concept.

And I told him he HAD to write it. He said if I wrote it with him, he’d write it, never figuring I’d agree to such a thing.

Except, I did.

And the rest is history!

It took us about 10 months from agreeing to write the book together to actually getting started on the draft, and in those ten months we met via video chat now and then to flesh out the plot and the characters. We drafted the book in about three months start to finish. And it took me a month to edit it. FOUR MONTHS to complete a novel!!! Wowie!

Co-writing a series has been a new experience for me, but I’ve really, really enjoyed it. The rate at which books can be finished when there are two people working on them still blows my mind. AND, writing a book that was less than 100,000 words was also a new experience for me.

You know what? I LOVED it!!! I LOVED being able to complete a novel in less than a year!

In fact, I’m on-pace in 2019 to complete two novels in just over six months.

That, to me, is incredible. If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, or even just for a few years now, you’ll know how I’ve always struggled to churn out big word counts, or to speed-write. (If you’re new to the blog, just browse through my old posts and you’ll see!) I’ve been drastically improving at that over the last two years now, and I finally, finally feel like I’m hitting my stride.

I finally feel like I might have things figured out, for realz this time.

We’ll see what happens!

In the meantime, you can purchase or borrow said DEBUT NOVEL, Starship Ass Book 1: Of Donkeys, Gods, and Space Pirates over on Amazon. So far, readers loooovvveeeee it … which just absolutely makes my day. <3

Nothing makes me happier than seeing those reviews roll in! So if you do read it, don’t forget to drop us a star rating or a few words and let me know what you think! Pretty please??? *bats eyelashes*

Thanks to everyone who’s supported me on this writing journey so far … I appreciate you so very much!!!

Until next time … help yourself to some cake!