IWSG June: A Month After Coming Out of The Closet...

(Once again, not that closet. This Closet.)

I've been a writer for a month now.

Well, technically I've been a writer for about 30 years, but I've officially been a self-published writer for a month.

How has it been going?

It's had it's ups and downs, for sure. I was all set to write a long, pessimistic post about the negative points and pitfalls and look for pity. This is the INSECURE Writers Support Group after all. But you know what? It really has been going pretty well.

I've found tons of support from the writing community as well as friends and family. I had lots of people jump on board and buy the book when it first came out, which was flattering and more than I expected. I was truly serious when I said I would probably only sell 3 copies. But no only did I get a flurry of interest in the first couple of days, I've continued to sell books - a few here, a few there - continuously for the last four weeks, which is hugely encouraging. Some of those books I can't even account for - meaning they're actually being bought by people who don't know me, or barely know me. That's both amazing and terrifying.

It's like handing out hundreds of these to strangers.
Every day.

I'm getting lots of activity on my Facebook page (You should check it out, all the cool kids are doing it), and my posts are being shared far and wide, allowing me to interact with people I would normally have never met. I'm hoping my natural charm will help convince them to buy a copy and maybe even tell a few more friends about it.

I've gotten several fantastic reviews, which warms the cockles of my black little heart.

Pictured.

I've done some guest Blogs as well as a podcast interview which was super fun (You should definitely check that one out). I've got several more scheduled for June, so you're going to be sick of me before you know it.

The book has ranked a few times in the "Contemporary Fantasy" section of Amazon.ca, peaking on Monday at #13. Since the number "13" is an important plot point in the story, I find this a good sign.

So yeah. As of today I'm optimistic, which I don't say very often.

Sure there's some hiccups. I STILL haven't gotten my tax paperwork sorted out, so all of the (admittedly meagre) money I've made so far is going to be cut 30% to pay Uncle Sam. I had some technical issues whilst tinkering with the file and ended up taking the book offline for the better part of a day. But it's all good now.

Pictured: Uploading a file to Kobobooks.com

Plus, I had some horrifying moments of personal introspection where I realized "Oh man, this was a terrible idea. This book is lousy and it has problems that I should have fixed and I'm going to shoot myself in the foot and even if anyone reads it now I'm going to turn them off and no one is ever going to read anything else I write ever again." But all writers go through that, right?

Right?

I'm not going to dwell on it now. Like I said, today, I'm in a pretty good mood.

Here's a happy puppy as proof.

Not to mention the next book is well underway...

So how has your month been?