Now... We Wait.

After weeks of revision, editing, reading, and re-reading I finally submitted my final draft to Chrissy at Damonza for formatting.

Now I know why authors often say they never read their book again once it is published. I can recite

the damn thing now, and my life doesn't even have to depend on it.

It was almost a year ago that I finished the first draft... more like Labor Day...but close enough. It's strange. When I started writing this I had no intention to publishing it. Paige's Story was just this...thing... I had rattling around in my head since I was in high school. The only reason I wanted to write it all out was so I could just have documented proof that my brain did a thing and it was kind of a cool thing.

I set out to write the One True Draft two years ago this coming November. As it turns out, I wasn't the only person who thought the thing rattling around in my head was cool. So, last year this time when the first draft was finished my husband and all our friends just started talking about me publishing it.

I remember very clearly sitting at the Brackman's Labor Day trap shoot thinking everyone was crazy

for believing I could publish this. But then, everything just became 'the next step'.  The first draft was done. The next step is to send it to beta readers. The beta readers gave their input. The next step was to write a new draft and then send it to a content editor to make sure the story made sense, flowed well, had plot holes... all that stuff. The content editor had his say so, the next step was to write yet a new draft taking all the suggestions into account. The next step was sending the revised draft back out to a couple readers for approval. After they gave their enthusiastic thumbs-up, the next step was to send it to the copy editor to fix the grammar, punctuation, and spelling. After she red-penned the ever loving shit out of it, I just had to fix all the errors.

....then, suddenly, I had a final draft in my hands. All shiny and chrome.  Now

that final draft is going to a professional formatter.

As soon as it's back all I have to do is upload it.

I never expected to get this far. When I started, I never wanted to get this far. But here I am and it's pretty exciting.