It’s amazing what you learn about publishing when you’re finally doing it.  After more than 20 years of working on and off as a professional writer, nothing really prepared me for what it would be like to publish a novel.  I signed my contract for Crazy Like Me on July 27, 2014.  Now, seven months later, I’m through three of the six stages of publishing.  The great part?  I’m through editing.

If there’s one thing I dread, it’s revision and the editing process.  However, I was surprised at how much I learned through the process of editing Crazy Like Me.  For example, and for reasons I don’t understand, the title Crazy Like Me is actually a grammatical nightmare.  Apparently, it should be Crazy like Me.  This is where poetic licensing and an editor who “gets” me come into place.  And, fortunately, I can keep my title as originally planned. 

Working with Colleen (my editor) on the revisions for Crazy Like Me wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated it would be.  A few nights of wanting to launch my laptop through a window were as bad as it got.  And the lessons learned were definitely worth it, even if I had succumb to such a temper tantrum.  Thankfully, I didn’t.  In the end, the editing process made the book stronger – for the most part – I still have reservations about some of the changes but have decided to not fixate on it.  It certainly made the writing stronger.

People have been asking me, what next?  With “likes” on my Facebook page blowing up, I’m beginning to get hooked up with a great group of fellow authors and potential readers.  For now, I’m focusing on that type of networking.  In the near future, I will begin the “polishing and proofing” part of this journey.  This means I – along with a team of several others – will be digging through the manuscript to find those pesky typos and other tiny mistakes.  With full revisions and editing sessions behind me, this will be more of a “Where’s Waldo?” quest for little things that need changing.

The really fun part begins shortly as I am teamed with a cover designer who will work with me to come up with the perfect image to capture Crazy Like Me.  A wanna be artist, I think this is the stage of the publishing process I’m most excited about!

With editing behind me, I feel like a superhero.  I don’t have an exact time frame for when the book will be released yet.  They say these final stages take between three and nine months.  However, with the hard part done, I don’t anticipate too many more all nighters.  I also expect to have more time to blog on the process and thank everyone who has supported me on this surprising journey into the unknown world of novel publishing!