Pre-Release Day Jitters

It’s T minus 6 days until the release of Nexus, the third and final book in my Supernova Saga; the blog tour is set to begin in 2 days; and the promoting for the release is well underway. Reviewers have had the tasty morsel for some time now, and they’re weighing in.

So, what am I doing? I’m chewing the inside of my cheek to bits. Only because I never chew on my nails.

I’ve said many times that writing is a form of therapy for me. It gives me the opportunity to purge my feelings onto the page, setting them free, and thereby hopefully relinquishing their hold on me. Right now, I’m feeling a healthy dose of anxiousness with a heaping side of the nerves. So many questions are bouncing around in my head like the old Atari Pong game, only much faster and with lots of breakable obstacles.

Will the book be well-received? Will it answer all the questions I’ve left dangling in the air over the course of the series? Will readers spend their hard-earned money on my words? Will it disappoint? Will it make or break my writing career? Does anyone even care?

I wonder if all authors feel like this when a book drops?

So, here I am . . . gearing up for the big release day while juggling a very busy season at my day job, trying to stay on top of writing the first book in my next series, plotting future books in that same series, doing all the things that go along with being a single mom, ordering promo gear and books for signings, and making sure everything is in place for ScareFest. Needless to say, my house is in serious need of a professional team of cleaners. I find myself wanting to get on my hands and knees. Not to take it good and proper like from behind, but to scrub my baseboards. Either way would be fine with me, but the baseboard thing would sort of kill two birds with one stone; keeping busy will exorcise the nerves while providing a sparkling clean . . . baseboard.

Yes, I’m obsessing over baseboards. And my face is breaking out. Damn, just how many gray hairs do I have anyway? Color my hair – yet another thing to add to the growing list of things to do. I wonder why I still refuse to include diet and exercise to that list. Oh, that’s right! Because I loathe both of them.

Want to know what my characters are doing? Well, Gabe has been on a shopping spree with my credit card like he’s actually going to be walking the red carpet. (I don’t have the heart to tell him the books haven’t been translated to film. Though you’d think he’d realize that to be in a movie, he’d have been required to make an actual appearance on a movie set to read lines. I think he’s in denial. I know my credit card company is.) The villains are chillin’, the heroes are eating hoagies (that’s mighty cannibalistic of them), and my secondaries are pulling their chairs up to the front row. It’s chaos, I tell you! And they have the audacity to look at me like I’m teetering over to the dark side of that fine line between brilliance and insanity. They might be right.

But through all of my crazy ramblings, I’m genuinely excited for you to read the ending of the saga. I’m unbelievably proud of Nexus. It’s my favorite in the series, even if it was the hardest one to write. Also, I’m told I need to warn you to have shamwows and tissues at the ready, so you might want to take note of that.

I’ll be around on release day, in case you feel the need to chat me up or just to hold my hand. Believe me, I’ll be needing it. Until then . . .

FLYAS!

~clp~