Every Book Release Day is always the new Worst Day Of My Life.

It’s hard to put myself out there, to wonder if anyone cares, to worry if the work is as good as I think it is. It’s impossible to know how it will be received, how I will be received.

I’m always a basket case that day. My husband said I needed a horse tranquilizer and that he was considering locking me on the balcony and throwing food at me every couple of hours. I not only didn’t blame him, but wondered if that was a good plan for next Book Release Day.

Maybe I should choose a career that makes me less unstable…

I have chosen a path of self-publishing because I believe in everything it stands for. But it’s also the scariest and most vulnerable path. I’m having to learn each part of it as I go, which is neither easy nor ideal.

It is what it is.

Sometimes I get really frustrated. I see people who write things that I think are less than exceptional but who have thousands of followers. There are writers who don’t even write things – people with no books, who rarely blog, who write for no other publications – but who still have thousands of followers on various platforms. Meanwhile, I’m trying my best, but sometimes it feels like progress is so slow.

I am truly thankful for everyone who supports me and reads my work. I don’t mean to belittle that at all. But I have always wanted this to be a career, and that means it has to grow and progress.

Some days I feel really depressed about it. I have no idea what I’m doing or how to decide what to do next or what to expect.

With my recent new Worst Day Of My Life following the release of my travel memoir “Shattering the Mirror“, I have been reflecting on all of these things. I was feeling down when I suddenly felt like writing. I sat down and wrote this:

“I’m not sure if I believe in destiny. I keep breaking myself against reality, like waves crashing again and again into an immovable cliff face. I thought I would be somebody. Thought? Think – I still do. Yet the stars I use to navigate my ship toward land are hidden behind thick cloud. I am creating and making and pushing myself – in silence. There is no one else around. I am an island, ship lost as sea, futile wave meeting rock repeatedly.

So what?

Really, so WHAT?

I can’t exist without creating, without the bravery to show the world. So I’ll keep making and sharing with the fishes. They may not know or say much, but they’re better than nothing. Maybe I never steered this ship at all, and maybe it’s always been headed for some faraway land. Maybe not. But, somehow, I don’t believe I’ll drown.”

And that about sums it up. It doesn’t actually matter if I become the next JK Rowling or if no one ever reads my work. I’ll keep making it and sharing it because that’s just who I am.

Thank you all for reading this blog and a big thank you to everyone who purchased my latest book. You are not the fishes in my prose-y piece; that was about me and feeling like an isolated failure and not about any of you at all. In fact, you are all more like the stars used to navigate that sometimes I can’t see through the clouds of my own doubts.

Thank you for being there anyway.
Happy sailing.