I’m not freaking out… Really!

Pretty much the moment after I officially released “Leaving Eva,” I started to FREAK OUT.  The kind of freaking out where you almost need a paper bag and a horse tranquilizer to calm down. 

I wondered: What in the Heck am I doing?!  Who do I think I am? What if nobody reads it?  What if everybody reads it?  My Mom is going to read it and it has the F word in it.  What if it really really really sucks?  What if it doesn’t suck?  Now everyone will know something about me that they didn’t know before!  Why in the world would I do this? What if everyone absolutely HATES it?

I think I paced my bedroom, almost unpublished it, almost threw myself out of the window… then I called someone close to me who’s done this a few times before.  She told me that it was perfectly normal to freak out and that everything was going to be okay. I believed her, I calmed down, and she was right.  Everything was okay.

It was an internal battle to even decide to release my first novel to the world. I thought about just keeping it for myself. I was the only one who had ever laid eyes on the entire manuscript and very few people knew that I even wrote it.  If I had never let it see the light of day, it wouldn’t have mattered.  At least it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone but Me.  When I decided to finish it, to release and share it, I did it because it was something I have always dreamed of doing. There have been numerous unfinished works over the years that I either lost interest in or was too distracted to see through to the end.

But looking back, I don’t think that life had taught me enough about patience or perseverance, until now. And I don’t think that anything I would have written prior to this point in my life, would have reflected the depth or substance that it would have needed to be meaningful, to me.  After all, I’ve only ever written for my own benefit.  I knew that I had to be okay with releasing it because I felt good about it, not necessarily because I was convinced that others would love it. It felt strange to want to share it, but I did.  I loved Eva and in a way, she released me. 

While there are people who have read “Leaving Eva”  and didn’t feel it was for them, there have been others who have read it and it touched them, or it affected them, or it gave them a different perspective. And while it’s not a best seller, and it very well may never be, I have no expectation. With the millions of books in the world, I’m happy every time that one person chooses to read it.  

In two days I will hit “publish” on my second novel, Losing Eva.  This time, there have been a few people who have read it prior to releasing it.  And this time, I feel that it’s not just My book.  It’s Our book.  It belongs to me, Peggy, Kim K, Stacey H, Lisa, Angie, Lara, Rick and Kim, Rogena, Tara, Jeff, and Stacey K.  From the people who helped me with the first novel to the second, this time it’s finished because I’ve had some wonderful friends and family along the way who have supported, encouraged, and advised me along the way.  I’ve been humbled by having so much support on my Facebook page, Twitter account, and my blog~so much more than I ever imagined.

So this time, I’m not freaking out… as much. Reviews will start coming in tomorrow with the start of my blog tour http://wp.me/p3raRE-J3 . And if I said that I wasn’t nervous, I would be lying.  I’m human. I want people to love it, I want it to sell a million copies, I want the reviews to be great.  But if they don’t and they aren’t, then I will be okay with that too. 

I love the story of Eva.  She’s beautiful, strong, flawed, and she’s become someone I am proud of.  If you have the chance to read her, then I hope you will love her too.  ❤