Unbridled excitement. That’s what I feel right now. I have a million things to do before my book comes out in a month and all these ideas keep chasing themselves around my head like hungry fish. I did some work after Aidan went to bed last night and had a very difficult time getting my brain to calm down enough to allow me to rest!

There’s just so much to do! Revisions, marketing plans, cover designs, my daily scheduled freak-out that no one’s going to read my book and that I’m an idiot and woe and WHYYYYYYYY.

It’s a lot to take care of, you know?

Still, though, the predominant thing I feel right now is unbridled excitement. It feels so freaking good to have made a decision and to be going for it. As I told Wes during our walk last night, my writing is what it is. I can either get it out there and have it be a huge failure now, or wait a few years and have it be a huge failure then.

There’s no sense in toiling over something, investing hours of effort and work into it only to keep it hidden away because of crippling (completely justifiable) insecurity. Who knows? Maybe I’m not meant to be a successful author. I’ll never know if I don’t give it a try, and I refuse to live in a world of could-have-been.

So here’s to the prospect of failure, without whom we would not have the prospect of success! My publisher says 10,000 copies sold is the magic number. That pretty much everyone in the publishing industry will take me seriously if I sell 10,000 copies of my book.

Quite frankly, I’ll be blown away if I sell 10. 100 would be incredible. 1,000 would be unfathomable. 10,000? Well, that there just seems like a pretend number to me.

Still. It’s up to me to market this thing to the best of my ability. I think I’ll talk up the flashy aspects of it (geek takes on The Man! There’s a hot gamer geek girl! And an Aston Martin DB9! There’s a Snickers bar eaten for breakfast, a game of hide and seek, lies, deception, and vengeance! It’s a fun book!) and do my best to refrain from jazz hands.

Unless, of course, I sell 10,000 copies. In which case I’ll do jazz hands as much as I please, thank you very much.

They frown on excessive exclamation point usage in snooty literary circles, you know.

Good thing I’m not snooty.

What I am, aside from being “not snooty”, is excited. Nervous. And more excited. My first book is getting published, and it’ll be available for public consumption in a month.

A MONTH!

This is me going for it. I’m putting my wishy-washy away and buckling on my big girl shoes. It’s time to get out there, and I’m going to start with my second novel. Called Pwned, it’s the story of professional gamer Sean Boxer, who is set up as the subject of an NSA investigation by a rival and has to choose between abandoning his dreams or fleeing the country in a desperate attempt to clear his name.

So that’s my big news. My novel will be published. In a month. E-freaking-GADS.