When I was about to have my first child, I learned super quickly that there’s a lot that nobody tells you. Sure, there’s the stuff that people know from movies and TV (all these cute ladies waddling around like they’re smuggling a basketball under their size-extra-extra-small shirts), but there are… symptoms. Stuff that happens before, during, after having a baby. Awful stuff. I’ll spare you the gory details. You can email me later if you really want to know. And if you know from experience: solidarity, friend.
Apart from all the Stuff No One Tells You About Until You Learn The Hard Way, there’s also the rotating list of questions from people: how far along are you? Is it a boy or a girl? Are you sure you aren’t carrying twins? (That last one may have been something that only I’ve heard.)
A lot of authors compare having a book release to having a baby. There’s some truth there. Something awesome and life-changing is coming into the world, and you had a lot to do with it! Thankfully, no one comments on my appearance when they ask me about my book, but they do often ask something along the lines of “How’s your book going?” or “When’s it coming out?”
It’s a fair question. I signed my contract with The Wild Rose Press in December, after all. And I finished the book! Don’t they just tidy things up, send it to print, and call it a day? How hard can it be?
What happens after “The End”
Publishing a book takes a surprising amount of work long after I type out the last few words of the manuscript. Before I even submitted it for consideration, I edited Stage Mouse myself—reading through all 93,000 words carefully to make sure that the story is the way I want it to look to any prospective publishers or editors.
My editor Eilidh at TWRP has been doing most of the heavy lifting on this part of the process. She and I have gone through the manuscript three more times, fine tuning things, cleaning up bits I didn’t notice on my own. A lot of it comes down to places where I’d revise a detail later in the story, but I didn’t edit the rest of the book to take that detail into consideration.
While this is going on, the cover art team at The Wild Rose Press have been working on my finalized cover art for when Stage Mouse is in print or on your e-reader. I’m waiting on the proofreader to complete their work, so I’m also hard at work building my author brand: content, engaging with other authors, and making connections with local places where I can do author events once the book is released. (Of course, they usually ask me “when’s your release date?” which, despite being a totally fair question, makes me twitch because I don’t know yet.)
What’s next
My proofreader is working on formatting my book for print. Within about a month, I’ll look at a digital version of my book as it will actually appear when you read it (this, I’ve come to learn, is known as the galley). I will look through the galley one more time really it’s the final time no takesie-backsies and give it my final OK. Then, it’s scheduled for a release date. If you’ve made it this far, you have at least earned this knowledge: it’ll probably be released by this summer.
With all those re-reads, re-re-reads, edits, revisions, and frantic bouts of imposter syndrome, you might be going, “Aren’t you sick of looking at your book by now?”
Yes. Yes, I am. But I still love her. And I can’t wait to share her with you.
