I’m the post-Covid bouncing back ball. A-OK in the mornings, fading in the afternoons. I’ll take the mornings!
For healthy me, rarely ill, when I do succumb, I go into a strange subterranean cave. Then, when on the mend, like the February 2nd groundhog, I stick my nose out and sniff around. Unlike the Wiarton Willie, I don’t care about the shadow thing; having got this far, I venture out. But like a hibernating animal, at least this is what I project onto the hibernators, the world looks a bit strange. I feel like a visiting alien. Can I have lived here all these years and some? There must be fodder here for fiction.
Back to my subterranean cave. Apart from the ill thing, it has been a very useful and productive time. I have focused and made a great leap forward on THE BOOK. I now await the proof copy of Pardon My Camino to arrive. That is for the paperback edition. Then I can check that it truly does have Chapter one where it should be, and the Epilogue is at the end. The e-versions were way simpler (if I got it right…) and look OK. They are sitting there in Kobo and Kindle, like a bird sitting on its eggs, waiting for them to hatch when I push the Publish button. EDA: end of February. Oh, glory be!
I even truly turned into a martyr and made a Facebook ad (many tricks on the set-up and you do pay for the ad.) I have revisited my self-publish guru David Gaughran, who is now, as I dig a bit deeper into his advice, saying don’t bother if you only have one book to your name. Save your money for when you have a series. Give me a break! I have made the bl***y thing, and I will spend my budgeted $50 and dam well use it! Big-time promotion.
The software, of course, was all a super stressful journey: the wrong formats that actually turned out to be OK after all, the book cover the wrong size, and then after three days of struggle all of a sudden it wasn’t (no thanks to me) As for the Facebook ad, well that is another labyrinth of gloom all unto itself!
I would love to do something creative with all this Sturm und Drang and acute angst over the whole e-challenge that some of us older humans experience as major life traumas. Like, write a novel. But what for a storyline? I can’t just whine on for 300 pages! A few years ago I got fired up with this idea. No story has emerged, but I did do a picture.
There I am, or some other e-victim, climbing up a mountain with the load of a computer on their back. I know the computer is large and chunky, but really, a slim iPad could not convey the burden.
FYI: the picture setting is Jasper National Park, along the Yellowhead Highway from the east as it borders the Athabasca River.
P.s. and please! Send me your plot ideas for “Heroes in the e-jungle”.