Being an author is nuts but so am I!

   

 Before I ever thought of writing a book I was an avid reader of romance novels gobbling up four or five a week minimum. I had no clue what the authors went through to bring me those hot scenes and addictive characters. Now I do and the appreciation meter is through the roof! I've been trudging along for two years now writing and loving every insane wild minute of it! 

     Writing is not just a job it's a passion and unfortunately there are a billion other people with the same passion. We all share the same dream of doing something we love and making money while doing it but it's not that easy, not at all. The fact is that there is an ocean full of talented writers who will probably never be discovered and it's heartbreaking. Unless you've got a little money and maybe even a friend who knows something about marketing and publishing a book you're sorta screwed. Sometimes it feels as impossible as breaking the sound barrier with a fiat but we keep plugging away. We use every second of every day that we aren't busy doing all of the other things like laundry, working a full time job, taking kids to school and oh I don't know living! And that's not it... oh no not even close. If an author can manage to finish writing their first draft you can bet they're yelling 'whoohoo oh my God I just typed The End!' little do they know they are only about twenty- five percent there. After a couple days of celebration the new author finally comes down from their high and realizes there are about a zillion edits to be done. They start the process of going back and forth with their editor and then back and forth some more until finally they're done...yea no... not really. Now they need a cover, a proofreader, beta readers and an awesome formatter to make all of the long hours of writing pretty and if you don't know anybody in 'the biz' again I say your screwed. 

     Every author has their own story, the Jodi Ellen Malpas's and Colleen Hoover's have immediate success with their first books and then there are the people who have no idea what they're doing and learn one tiny tidbit about being an author every day until bam they've got a hit! And then there are the writers who shouldn't be touching a pen to a sheet of paper or tapping their fingers on a keyboard...ever. 

     Authors and writers old and new who are successful or flops Indie or published make up the melting pot of some of the most interesting, intelligent, wacky, out of their mind people that populate the earth and I'd like to say how proud I am to be included in that group of people!