My First Published Book! Excitement! Stress. Fear?

For YEARS I've been thinking about the publication of my first book. I always thought it would be a novel because, well, my first novel is done...ish. I technically finished my first novel in 2011, and since then I've been rewriting and editing and have been hell bent on succeeding with the traditional publishing route.

Like many authors, self-publishing felt like cheating. If my book wasn't good enough to be accepted for representation by a literary agent, or to have a full manuscript requested by a traditional publisher, then why would I bother putting that drivel out into the world?

Then something happened. I turned 40. In December of 2023 I turned 40 years old and let me tell you, there are few things that make a man question what he wants to accomplish in life more than really considering the fact that his life might be officially half over.

Mid-life crisis is very real my friends, and it's been slowly tightening its sneaky grip around my gut for the past few years. Hitting the four zero has sent it into overdrive, but it hasn't resulted in a desire to buy a sports car or start looking for younger women (no reason to with a wife like mine)—instead its resulted in this constant nagging feeling that I've waited too long to accomplish the things I really wanted to accomplish from my personal bucket list. I waved bye bye to my dreams of performing on stage alongside Rob Thomas years ago, that ship has sailed, and I'm a mediocre musician at best (though I wouldn't mind challenging Josh Groban to a sing-off at some point...time and place, bro....time and place). But becoming a REAL author? That one has a little more leniency when it comes to age and success finding each other.

I decided that I couldn't wait forever, or even for my novel to be "finished" to the standard I'm trying to achieve (while not even being certain what that standard is...). I had been tossing around the idea of combining my short stories into a collection for quite some time, and upon turning 40, I decided to light a fire under myself by committing to a release date. I stopped waffling on how many stories should be included, what the order should be, if any of them were good enough, etc. Some of them I've already put out there on my YouTube channel as an audio version, and the few people who listened to them seemed to like them. I settled on an even 10 stories, I stuck them in some kind of order, I formatted for hard copy and eBook, I edited as much as I could (which I could not have done without the help of some amazing friends who did beta reading and type editing for me bringing to my attention a TON of stuff I overlooked), and I set a date. I fumbled my way through Amazon KDP, uploaded the manuscript, and set a date. Now comes the natural result of such a decision. Fear. Will people like it? Some won't, and some will, and I'm doing my best to make peace with that and prepare for the haters. Now comes the part that I'm really trying to figure out...marketing—duh duh DUUUUUUUUHHHH! But that's another blog for another day. Stay freaky my friends!