To Be is to Be Perceived
I always dreamed of being an author. Not for the fame, the fortune, but for the joy. I love when someone tells me they enjoyed my book. I don't have words to adequately express how it felt when my daughter called me every so often sharing her emotional responses to certain events in the story. Sharing a part of myself that way is incredibly rewarding. The stories and the characters come alive for me when I write. And I think - if I did my job well - that they come alive again when someone else reads them. Feels what they feel, rejoices and suffers along with them. But that only happens if people know its out there to be read. Marketing, promotion, publicity - a trifecta of necessary evils. I don't enjoy spending time online soliciting readers. It feels as if I'm spending all my time hollering READ MY BOOK instead of writing the next one. And I always worry that I'm annoying, or only reaching the same people over and over, which admittedly is annoying. Unfo...