It’s a good thing I did retire. There’s a lot of work that I never saw coming for self-publishing. I did it mostly myself – help with the cover (Thanks Wyndell!) but the formatting and uploading and creating accounts was all on me.  

To be honest the actual formatting of the book was the easiest part. Setting up the accounts with everyone was the hassle – kudos to Amazon and Barnes and Noble for being the most user friendly IMHO. Face it, if I had a staff, I wouldn’t think about these things, but the staff is in the future. CreateSpace is still beyond me, but I haven’t given up. It’s one of the main reasons I did retire while I have some brain cells still firing (despite what Hubby says).

The formatting actually makes sense and now I use it automatically while I type – I desperately wanted my first self-pub to be clean as well as a good story. Had it edited and beta’d extensively because I’ve seen some really good stories out there that turned me off with the misspellings and missing words. Not that I don’t have them (Nora has them on occasion!), but most of them can be fixed. Hey, if you spot any in Alien Embrace – let me know asap!

If has been a great learning experience. Being an old dog, I’m sure I staved off some short-term memory loss for at least seven minutes with all the brain exercises I’ve been doing. Fortunately I have friends (especially Nancy!) who have survived this experience and like all the writers I’ve met through RWA and HCRW have been incredibly supportive and helpful. This is a great thing – I’ve worked with many women in the real world, and these writers have given me hope again for women supporting women.

Now if I can just get a handle on that marketing thing . . .

And Mac’s Family is coming out through Rebel Ink this summer – I’m gonna take a break and just write!