Launch Week and What Comes Next

I can't believe it's finally here. After six months of planning, plotting, and procrastinating (we all do it), The Purple Door District is finally going to see the light of day. I've already sent a few copies out to ARC readers and to my indiegogo supporters, and the reviews thus far have been great. My favorite has to be: 

"Casey caught me hook, line, and sinker and I'm already impatient for the sequel!" -Rebecca Daniels. 

At this moment I'm putting the final pieces of the launch together. I dropped books off at Prairie Lights and M and M Bookstore. It's surreal to be handing them a paper copy of my book. My bookmarks at Haunted Bookshop are gone already, and a couple press releases should be appearing in the paper any day now. Everything is headed in the right direction. 

On Saturday, December 15th, the book will launch both on amazon and in stores. My first signing is at the North Liberty Community Library where there will be free cookies and pictures with Santa for the kids while parents do last-minute shopping. It's my first chance to sell my books beside other authors, and I can't wait. I've met so many incredible people over this past year, and it'll be such an honor to actually sell my book beside them. If you're in the North Liberty area, stop on by from 10am-1pm. You can find more information here. 

Saturday night will be the big event. From 6:30-8:30 pm, I'm holding a signing and reading event at The Makers' Loft in Iowa City. This is a fantastic new business that helps support local indie creators. They've agreed to sell my books there as well because they want to start a book section. People can come get their books, celebrate with dessert, and then listen to a reading at 8 pm. I'm also holding a raffle. Authors Shakyra Dunn, R.C. Davis, Alexandra Penn, Eliza David, and more, will donate their books to the prize pool. You might walk away with more than a couple of gifts! 

And speaking of gifts, Marion Mavis, author of The Supremacy Witch, and I are doing a giveaway on Instagram! Go check out our guidelines on how to win signed copies of both of our books! 

I really hope to have a great turn out to blog about. You can be sure I'll take pictures, and I'm planning to do a brief live recording as well. 

Then, on Sunday, I'll finally face plant my bed and get some rest.

This whole experience has been incredible, but it's also been draining. There have been more than a few times that I've wanted to throw up my hands and toss in the towel. Publishing a book is practically a second job. When I'm not doing my daily work and volunteer positions, I'm usually busy with writing, editing, or marketing. I'll admit I haven't taken quite enough time for myself since the whole process started, but I'm hoping to get some breathing room now that the book is going to be published.

What then, do you ask? What's the future of The Purple Door District? 

The answer is twofold. This will not be the only book. I started working on book 2, tentatively named Wolf Pit, and I'm already 50,000 words into it. My hope is that I can publish it in 2019. At the same time, my co-creator and I, AE Kellar, plan to work on our main series to get that ready for publication. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but with The Purple Door District finally taking flight, we think we're ready to crank the work out. 

The story doesn't end here, my friends.

The journey is just beginning. 

Pride

Today was a milestone in my life. I arrived home and found a package waiting for me in the mail. 

It was the proof of my book. 

Emotions flooded through me. Excitement. Fear. Anxiety. Pride. I've spent so many months writing, revising, and preparing this book for publication, I just didn't know how it would turn out. I could open the box and find a beauty or a beast. What if I hated it? What if it didn't live up to my expectations? What if I screwed up the formatting? What if...

I think the smile here says how I feel. 

This has been quite the journey, and though it's nowhere near over, getting this far has been an adventure in and of itself. I decided in June that I was going to publish The Purple District. I'd been posting it on Patreon for about 7 months at that point, and I realized that the book could actually go on the market.  I knew it would be a lot of work to edit, proofread, format, market, etc, but I didn't realize just how crazy things would get, and how fast that time would fly. Nor did I realize how it would impact me mentally. 

Most people don't know what goes on behind the scenes when an author creates a book. You see their marketing strategies and the final products, but not the struggles along the way, or the self-doubt. I pride myself on being a pretty honest and open person, and I'm not lying when I say that there were several times I wanted to quit the book. I cried, I screamed, I threw my hands up in the air and said, "why bother? It's never going to be good enough." I went through the typical thing all authors do; I thought my work was trash and didn't deserve to see the light of day. My editors and beta readers said otherwise, of course, and that gave me the courage to keep going. 

But deep down, there was another fear. For the first time I was going to put a big part of myself out there to be read, reviewed, judged, enjoyed, hated, whatever the feelings might be. Part of me didn't feel like I deserved the honor of having a published book. Part of me felt like I was ready to take on the responsibility. Today? I'm just proud to be able to hold the book in my hands and realize that I made this. I didn't do it alone, of course, but I had the strength and courage to see the book through. 

It's a surreal feeling. I almost don't believe that I'm holding the book in my hands. Sure, there are flaws and there are things I need to fix, but I'm one step closer to being a published author. This opens the door to literary events, conventions, readings, and signings. I'm terrified to launch into this new world, but I crave it as well. Failure is always gnawing at the back of my mind. What if I mess up? What if I don't do enough? What if I just...fail? 

I guess in the end, it doesn't matter because look how far I've come. Even if people hate it or it doesn't sell well, I still did it. I still put in the time, effort, love, tears, and dedication to produce this piece of work, and that in itself is an accomplishment and something I should take pride in. 

I guess I want people to remember to take a moment and feel pride in themselves and their work. Whether you're just starting, you've created short stories, written full novels, or published your books, you're all authors. You all have dedication to the craft. Be proud of that. Look at your work and realize, "I did this." It doesn't matter how big or how small it is. You still created it. Hold on to that feeling so that you can go back to it when you have moments of self doubt. And remember, you're not alone. We all struggle with it and we all wonder, "Am I good enough?" 

I think you are. Keep writing, keep creating, and keep shining. Be proud of yourself, because I'm proud of you. 

And like I say on my dedication page, to anyone who feels alone or needs a community...welcome to the District. 

The Purple Door District: Behind the Scenes

The world of The Purple Door District started out as the stubborn brainchild of AE Kellar and myself. We have spent years writing together, researching, brainstorming, and developing characters and rules governing our parahumans and worlds. Our main series, Fates and Furies, is still in production but occurs in the same urban fantasy setting.

But let me backtrack a little.

AE Kellar and I met each other on a Redwall roleplaying site when I was still in high school. We had a mutual interest in the book series by Brian Jacques, obviously, and the forums gave us the opportunity to create our own characters, be they cat in AE’s case, or a silver-striped red squirrel named SilverRose Brighteye. Some of you may recognize my NaNo name.

For those unfamiliar with roleplaying on forums, basically one person writes out a few paragraphs of a scene with their character, someone responds, and the two people (or more) write back and forth to create an adventure. Redwall provided the world for us; we just had to worry about the characters and plot.

We wrote together for years, developing characters and immersing ourselves in the world. Eventually, we sought after a change and started roleplaying on an urban fantasy website that has long since closed. That’s when we realized that we might have found our niche. We took our characters, built a world, and ran with it, rping back and forth most nights. We’d alternate taking point on a plotline and naturally switch to the next person.

Unless we both brainfarted, in which case we just started up a new plotline.

Years of writing produced thousands of pages of writing (I’m not joking, AE took a picture of the pile of paper). Eventually, we realized we wanted to do something with it, and thus Fates and Furies was born. But in order to fully create the series, we had to know more about our world.

When we started to design the District, I latched onto it and suddenly had ideas blossoming in my head about creating one in Chicago (I grew up around the area). Plus, as a birdmom of seven feathered kids, it gave me the chance to professionally write about a werebird, even if I still get the side eye. With AE’s blessing, I wrote The Purple Door District to introduce you to our insanity.

But what about the PDD struck a chord in me? It was the community. I loved this idea that people of different talents, appearances, and strengths could come together to protect one another. A lot of urban/paranormal fantasies focus on the battle between werewolves and vampires or different magical groups. It was nice to think that there was a neutral ground where everyone could get along under the direction of The Violet Marshall. With the way the country is going today, I felt it was important to show that it’s possible for a mixing pot of people to actually come together peacefully. I chose Chicago specifically because I knew I could create a diverse cast. Even more characters will appear in The Purple Door District Book 2.

Community plays a huge role in my life. I help bring writers together through The Writers’ Rooms, a non-profit corporation that focuses on providing a free, safe environment for writers no matter their background, income, experience, gender, etc. And I work with The Iowa Writers’ House which also supports writers through workshops, lectures, and bicultural fellowship. In the writing world, I firmly believe that the only way we can succeed is if we support one another. Rising Tide, as Brian K Morris calls it.

Even through the book production, I reached out to the community for help. I asked Oni Algarra and Gabriella Bujdoso to create art for the book, indie artists who post on deviantart and instagram respectively. My cover artist is a Fiverr creator named Les. Sara Cunningham used her marketing magic to create sand jars and postcards for my book. Amanda Bouma taught me how to make jewelry so I could develop Bianca’s necklace. Leona Bushman, a fellow urban fantasy writer, guided me through editing my book and polishing it for publication. Alexandra Penn helped me format the book and was one of my main supporters who gave me the courage to publish the book. And my wonderful proofreaders, Shakyra Dunn and AE made sure the book was ready to go. I couldn’t have done this without my community, and I’m excited to support them just as they supported me. That’s partially why I created the Indiegogo campaign. I wanted to help give back to them.

As of November 5th, The Purple Door District is available for pre-order on amazon. There are no words I can use to convey my pride, joy, and hint of terror at having my book out there (I think I used up all my words in the manuscript haha). I do know that, had it not been for AE, I never would have been able to create such an immersive world.

We jokingly say that AE is the brain and I’m the heart, but I think it’s very true. While AE fills our books with well-researched facts and logic, I add feeling, creativity, and literary flare. I couldn’t have done it without my walking encyclopedia. All you see in The Purple Door District exists because of our love for storytelling and our incessant need to get fewer than 8 hours of sleep a night.

Keep an eye out. Fates and Furies is on the horizon.

And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all of your support during this crazy and amazing journey.

Welcome to the District.

Writer Burnout

It's fitting that I'm writing about this topic since I'm dealing with writer burnout myself. Let's try some real talk. As a writer, no one is harder on you than yourself. You push yourself to write, edit, market, publicize, etc. When you publish a book, you wear all these hats, and you tell yourself you have to keep going every hour of the day. If you stop, what if you miss an opportunity? What if people think you aren't working hard enough? What if you don't meet a deadline? What if--

You snap. 

Suddenly the world crashes down and you don't know where to go, or who to turn to for help. Ideas vanish. You sense the start of a panic attack. Nothing you do feels right or enough. And sometimes, you just go numb because it's all too much to deal with. 

This hit me last week, and I'm slowly crawling my way out of it the depths as I write this blog while sitting in a Panera. One moment I was up and productive, and the next I was curled up in my bed, unable to move from complete mental and physical exhaustion. Last week, the only strength I had was to go to work then come home and sleep. I knew I should put up posts, tweet, be interactive with the community, edit, write, etc but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I opened a blank page on my computer, and I almost burst into tears because plucking ideas out of my head was like tearing at an infected scabs. 

Not exactly a delightful image, but it's the best way I can describe it. I was surviving on caffeine and doing everything I thought I could to edit and promote my book. The one important thing I forgot to do? Take care of myself. 

When you get to the point that even opening a Word document makes you sick to your stomach, it's time to step back from the page. You're allowed to skip a day of editing, writing, and marketing. You're allowed to get more than a couple of hours of sleep at night. And you are allowed to take care of yourself. 

So what do you do when writer burnout hits you? Here are a couple of tips. 

• Sleep: If you've been falling asleep editing/writing your manuscript at night, it's time to step back and go to bed. Your body and brain will thank you. Even better, it'll refresh you. 

• Shut Down Social Media: It's not the end of the world if you're not on twitter/facebook for a day. My favorite thing to do is to shut off my phone and put on a good movie that makes me happy. 

• Do Something Else: Try another hobby that's not writing related. Go on a short trip. Hang out with your friends. Allow yourself to enjoy the rest of your life while you recover. 

• Take Personal Time: On the flip side, if going anywhere is too exhausting, then rest at home. Read a good book. Listen to music. Cuddle your cat or dog or bird (in my case). Focus on self care. If you don't mind your body, how do you expect to keep going? 

• Take a Mental Health Day: Whether it's from work (if able) or from social events, just back out and do something for you. Get a massage. Cuddle up in warm blankets. Allow your brain to rest. Getting rid of the regular stresses might help you recharge. 

• Write Something Else: Believe it or not, sometimes if you have writer burnout, it may be due to a specific project. Try switching it up and write something that inspires you, whether it's a short prompt, or a fun story you've had stuck in your head.

• Be Kind: I can't stress this enough. Be kind to yourself and realize this happens to everyone. Taking a break doesn't make you a bad writer; quite the contrary. It means you're being responsible for yourself. When you break your arm, you give it time to heal. You have to do the same thing when your muse breaks, so please, be kind to yourself. 

• Remember it Doesn't Last Forever: When you get into this state, sometimes it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's there. Sure, there might be some smoke or shadows blocking it, but you'll find your way to it, and your writing spirit will ignite again. 

• Make a Schedule: When you feel like you're ready to jump into the fray again, take it slow. Create a schedule of things you want to do to get yourself up and running. And check off the things you accomplish. It's a great feeling. 

Please take care of yourself, my friends. It's just as important to keep your mind healthy as it is your body.