Being on pins and needles is a two-edged sword. (How’s that for a painful analogy at both ends of the same sentence?)
On one hand, I’m as nervous as a March hare with a hawk hovering overhead.
On the other, I’m as ready as a Triple Crown-eligible race horse to leave the starting gate and be on my way!
The four things that are riveting me in one place and making me feel trapped in a degree of trepidation are:
- I have to re-record several chapters of my upcoming audio book to make them fit the requirements of the company where I want to place it. I recorded the chapters just fine the first time, but I combined several short chapters into single audio files, and the company insists on one file per chapter unless a chapter is more than two hours in length, in which case it has to be separated into two audio files. (Only one of the chapters exceeds two hours, thankfully.) So I need to separate the combined shorter chapters into individual files, and I don’t know how to do that without re-recording them since I saved them as MP3s and there is no way (that I know of) to separate them into different files. The tasks will only take me a little more than a full day, I think, but I can’t start until Monday because there’s too much noise and carrying on in this house during the weekend with my sister and her family (son, wife and two daughters) coming and going at all hours. I was also hosting a big dog until this evening and he was in my den off and on (mostly on) wagging and doing other noise-producing doggy things…
- I’m waiting for sufficient money to come in to be able to get the ISBN numbers for the various editions that I’ll be rolling out. The money taken in for pre-orders in 2013 is in another person’s Paypal account (the publisher that I intended to publish this book with before I decided to publish my own titles) and she won’t be able to release it back to its rightful owners until sometime next week. Many of the people who pre-ordered are waiting to order from me until they get back the money they paid to her, so I have to wait for that to happen or use my credit card to buy ISBN numbers… NOT something I want to do! Numerous people have already pre-ordered copies direct from me, so I’m sneaking up on the amount I need, so all will be well but for right now, I’m feeling a little frazzled until it all gets ironed out.
- I’m waiting for the final cover from the cover artist. She is creating the back cover, too, so I sent her the copy that I wrote for it. When I get it back, I’ll upload the cover to Createspace, append the ISBN number for the full-color version to it, and put it up on Amazon so fans can begin pre-ordering it.
- I’m waiting for the manuscript to be fixed. Why “fixed” you ask? The publisher who had it most recently messed it up royally after she got it from me, so Lisa has had to painstakingly go in and fight with flighty margins, added words and spaces, and other crazy formatting issues so Scrivener can produce a professional, seamlessly-formatted result. She and I may have to re-type the first paragraph of very chapters and several chapters if she can’t figure out how to get rid of some of the formatting that was imposed on the manuscript we sent the publisher. The publisher imposed drop caps (big fancy leading letters) on the first letter of the first word in every chapter, and that is playing havoc with the entire paragraph… so we may have to type them out again. Some of the chapters are also doing strange things that Scrivener is “seeing” as right-handed very narrow margins, so the copy gets squished against the right-hand side of the page. It has been an unmitigated nightmare getting it straightened out. Lisa deserves combat pay! I would have pulled my hair out by now…
Three things are making me feel like a racehorse wanting to bolt out the starting gate:
- I am convinced that this book is going to rock readers’ worlds (in a good way!) so I can’t wait to release it to them, sit back, and wait for their responses to start coming in
- I am convinced that this title will roll out in a way that none of my previous books ever have and, as a result, the exposure it gets will be exponentially greater than anything I’ve ever experienced before as an author
- I want to have the book launch behind me so I can concentrate on the follow-up parts of the process: the interviews, live presentations, book signings, excerpt-posting, social media outreach, and all of the other stuff that will happen as sci-fi fans begin to focus less on this month’s wonderful new Star Wars motion picture and more on Star Trek’s upcoming 50th anniversary on September 8th, 2016. I’ll have exactly eight months following the book launch on January 8th to make the most of the excitement that will accompany Trek’s Golden Anniversary year. After September 8th, the world’s attention will focus will change quickly to politics and the Olympics so the Trek train will leave the station for another five years. Heck, I might not even be alive five years from now, so I want to do all I can to help extend De’s legacy this time around.
Pins and needles aren’t as unsettling as the fight-or-flight response. Pins and needles are just prickly “reminders” that my to-do list isn’t yet complete and won’t be until September 8th — but a lot of remaining details need to be properly orchestrated and massaged into place so they happen during the timeline I’ve set. More specifically, the launch needs to happen on January 8th. (Does it need to kill everyone involved to make it happen? Heavens, no! The launch date is entirely arbitrary but it feels like the perfect date because it’s eight months to the day before the actual 50th anniversary of Star Trek, so it’s symbolic. It’s the “starting gate” step of the race. It’s the moment when the race horse (me!) is set free to run the race that I was born (and groomed by De) to run. It’s a run for the roses. It’s show time.
It’s an exciting time. So I have Christmas Tree Brain–Racehorse Readiness Brain. I want to run! I just have to wait until everything is in its proper place… and it’s driving me more than a little bit batty! Usually I’m mindful–that is, I focus on right here, right now. But that’s nearly impossible at the moment. January 8th is the date I need to be ready for, and it’s going to take probably half of the days that exists between now and then to get all our ducks in a row and make them quack on cue!
Sleep is important…but with Christmas Tree/Racehorse Brain, sleep is elusive. I reckon you can relate!
