I started writing this new blog to explore the crazy, life-sucking problems of publishing a first book. The actual writing, the editing, the extra proof reading, the alcohol consumption, the thoughts that everything I write sucks and people will laugh, the cover design, the pictures to include, the size of the margins, will someone be pissed off if i don’t thank her in the acknowledgments?…I literally could go on for a week with all the things that are rattling around in my brain.

Do I pass out bookmarks for advertisement? What about postcards? What do I sign at my book signing if someone bought the Kindle version? Will Kindle snobs scoff at bookmarks? Will anyone even come to my book signing?

What do I do with the 400 people signed up to my blog? [email protected] can’t be a real person. I have 27 followers from rediffmail.com. What if spam is the only feedback I get? And, is this a worse rejection than the dreaded letter from the publishing house?

If I’m going to properly document my publishing process, I guess that these neuroses, among hundreds of others, need to come out at some point. So I’m getting them out first, before I even begin recounting the actual technical details of publishing.

But back to reality, I now have a completely edited third draft that I will prepare for the final read-through before submitting. OMG what if there’s a typo. Time to let that thought go. Nothing is ever perfect.