It's Out. Raise a Glass.

I've eventually managed to overcome the absolute sense of dread and self-doubt that I've felt about actually finishing Amy and the Professor and letting it be seen by anyone in public.


It took me all of 8 months from writing the first line in mid-January to clicking the "Publish" button in the Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. 8 months! Of course not all of that time was spent writing a short 35,000 word novella.

My time tracker shows that about 60% of the time I spent on the Amy project was spent on tasks other than writing. A lot of reading, (ironically, mostly about the art and act of writing itself), learning all I could about cover artwork, the technicalities of ebook and paperback formatting and layout, and hours toward the end on editing and rewriting. Maybe it gets easier from here on. But, holy heck, giving birth to Amy's story was a lot more complicated than I'd ever imagined. At least for me.

Two thirds of it was done for ages. And then it just sat there. Stagnated as I procrastinated. I'd find any and every excuse or reason not to fire up the laptop and finish writing. On my best day of writing, I got almost 4,000 words down. So it wasn't a case of not being able to write. The longer it dragged on the more obvious the problem became. I knew that once I finished writing, the only thing I could do with it was publish it. And that's what worried me.

I honestly still don't know whether doing it was the right thing. Don't know if I'm prepared for the potential criticisms and complaints. But I read something a week ago that lit the fire and got me to get it done, and get it out:

 

And so, here we are.

Amy and the Professor is the first of the standalone stories that I hope to release in the Lipstick Alphabet series of stories. It's available exclusively on Amazon Kindle listed at $2.99. I've published in the Amazon Select program so it - and all future stories in the set - is available for free to Kindle Unlimited users.

A paperback version is also available on Amazon books if you prefer having your eromance books in a hard copy.

Alternatively, if you're still not ready to risk your coin on such an unknown, no-one - least of all me -would blame you. I have a few copies available for Free via Instafreebie (and if you're actually reading this, you deserve a free copy just for that - please take one!)

Hopefully #2 in the set will be a lot smoother. Look out for Calming Brooke, coming in sooner than 8 months time. Hopefully!