Have you ever had a week from hell?
Sure you have, just like everyone else. No one escapes.
I don't know why the universe chose this week to fail me. Maybe my stars weren't properly aligned, maybe it was a full moon, or maybe my lunar whatever failed. But learn from this, folks! Never try to juggle too many balls in the air at the same time, especially when you're sleep deprived and playing beat the clock!
Next weekend, I have a huge book signing here in Phoenix at The Ultimate Women's Expo with six of my author friends.
Because I've promised so many of my fans, it's important for me to have Deadly Obsessions ready for sale. I have fans who've specifically come to my signings for my latest releases. While in the process of waiting for Createspace to review the file, I get the brainy idea to reformat my other two novels. There wasn't anything wrong with the way they looked, I just wanted to try out this new look. Mind you, this signing is the 26th and 27th. What that meant was I had to have all the files uploaded and in Createspaces' fat little hands so they could review and print in time for the signing.
As any author will tell you, uploading your own file is a huge undertaking because you want everything to look perfect. Despite that noble objective, sometimes things are missed. It has happened even with my traditionally published novels. And I've seen it in some of the NY Times Best Selling authors' books too. It's just a fact of life--perhaps its only with fiction novels. I don't read many non-fiction novels to know the difference, and quite frankly, if a paragraph is off a space, or there are missing quotation marks, I don't even see them. My job isn't to critique the book--I'm escaping to read something else that takes me to a different place. Obviously, if my project was to critique the work, I'd study those pages a lot harder. But for me, I can't do both at the same time. Now, that's not to say that if there are glaring errors, misspelled words, or something that doesn't make much sense, all bets are off and it's a different story--no pun intended. But then, I'd shut the book and forget about it, and most likely donate it to the library.
So, I finally upload the files, do my final review and I'm pleased to give Createspace the go ahead to review and put it up on Amazon. Mission accomplished! I place my orders.
In order to expedite the books to meet my deadline, I paid the two-day turnaround fee. It was worth it on so many levels, one being I could finally get a good night's sleep. Today, I received notification that the books had shipped--I'll have them by Monday. Totally awesome, right? Wrong!
I uploaded the wrong title with the wrong cover for the print copies. Thank God, I have ten other copies in the old format, still good, but not as spiffed up as the new format. Needless to say, I'll be shredding ten copies when they arrive. Sigh.
So, how was your week?
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