It is trying—taxing, if you will—all this effort to make your writing stand out above the suffocating dreck* of 21st Century publishing.
“It’s a process,” my daughter wisely observed at dinner when I told her my first novel is now on the shelf at the West Des Moines Public Library, right there in the heart of my adolescence.
Blood Solutions turned up first at the Longmont Public Library just a few days ago, a few miles from my Colorado home, and it is slowly getting noticed and even purchased from various fine online bookstores.
It’s a process, for sure.
Ask the person in the next seat on the bus what she’s reading on that NOOK. Learn that she appreciates a good crime story. Recommend your new one.
Guy at the bus stop asks what’s new. Tell him.
Leave a copy lying around in your office, like a nightcrawler dangling below a bobber on a pond. Set the hook when a potential reader nibbles.
Send some emails. Ask beta readers and others to recommend your book on Goodreads, Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, if they would be so kind and did actually like the story.
Schedule some tweets. Revel in obscurity.
“Don’t be shy,” I remember Mick Fleetwood admonishing me again and again in his drum solo at the Pepsi Center. You say he wasn’t talking just to me? OK.
Still, don’t be shy. Build your platform.
Work on the next book.
I did ask for this, I remind myself
It’s a process, and it’s interesting, and rewarding.
* I tried to read 50 Shades of Grey a few months ago and barely made it past the first chapter. I wasn’t offended by the subject matter, but the writing was just too awful to go on.
The Smith Compound 