This Is All So New!

Hello!

This is my first blog post as an author (well, publicly…on my official author site). So, since you are reading this, thanks for being here! I’m super excited about this journey I’m taking and that you’re hanging out with me as I navigate through the craziness of being a newbie author and self-publishing my first novel.

I’ve been a reader all my life (thank you, Mom). Around the time of having my first child, I started to read more. I found myself reading 30 to 40 books a year. Does that sound like a lot to you? Meh, just wait. Then in early 2014, I started a book blog with a friend, Obsessive Book Nerd (shameless plug goes here).

Once I realized there were PR companies devoted to book publicity and sites that I could request ARCs (advanced reader copies) from, my little reading heart nearly exploded. So I started reading, reviewing, and blogging like mad. Now, I read 125 to 150 books a year. Trust me, I know a lot of book bloggers who read way more than that. Wowzers!

While being a wife, mommy, and book blogger, I also work full time. When I started working for Brady Games*, a leading video game strategy guide publishing company, I didn’t know a thing about video games. But my husband was obsessed with them, so win for him. I quickly found myself learning everything I could about video games. I was the social media maven in the office and needed to be able to interact with our fans. So, yeah, I picked up the basics. To note, seven years later, I school the hubs on current and upcoming video game info…often. Also note, he will deny this.

*Brady Games, now PrimaGames, is an imprint of the super, teeny tiny publishing house, Penguin Random House. (Ha!)

Moving on.

One day…while mindlessly researching professional video gamers for potential sponsorship opportunities, a thought popped into my head…

“A romance novel about a professional gamer would be cool.”

Then a couple days later, after thinking about this non-extinct romance novel, the thought morphed into…

“What if I wrote a romance novel about a professional gamer? That would be cool.”

So I played around with this crazy idea and then finally mentioned it to my husband about a week or so later. And he said…

“Do it!”

I’m gonna press pause here….

This little gem is my go to motivational…pep talk…harassment. Which I’ve watched several times over the past year or so when it comes to this whole write a novel and publish novel dealo.

Anyways, a few months later I finally decided to do it. Morgan and Dex had made home in my brain and they weren’t going anywhere until I wrote their story.

I had heard about NaNoWriMo and decided that it was the perfect way to jump into writing a novel. If you’re not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s kinda a big deal. You challenge yourself to write a 50K-word first draft during the month of November. That’s 1,666 words a day. But you know what? I did it.

Let me tell you, this whole novel writing process and publishing process is scary, intimidating, and frustrating. It’s full of edits after edits, rewrites and deleting, and querying agents who “just don’t think your story fits with what they are looking for.” Or agents that ask you to add 15K more words and then just never get back to you.

But it’s also rewarding, exciting, and addicting. I’ve got so many stories and characters in my head ready to flow from my fingers. I’m getting really close to getting my first novel, Level Me Up, on Amazon, to share with the world (well, America, since it’s not going to be translated…yet). So I sincerely hope you keep coming back here and follow along with me as I slip and slide through this crazy-exciting journey!

Untill next time…