Shortly before I finished the manuscript for “As Luck Might Have It,” I went to Kindle Direct Publishing and set up the book. KDP offers a hardcover option these days. I have yet to avail myself of that. So far, I am staying with paperbacks and eBooks.

One of the hardest parts about setting up the book is creating the cover. To be fair, KDP does make it ridiculously easy to do that. It’s just that they don’t always have graphics and photos to meet my needs. So I find myself making do.

If I were more tech savvy, I could probably create some art that would be more what I want my cover to convey. But sadly, I’ve tried with the limited tools I have to do that and failed miserably. Also, I don’t really have it in the budget to hire someone to make a fantastic cover for me. So, as I said, I make do.

This time around, I only had to re-upload the manuscript once after looking at the preview of the book on KDP. I hope that means that I am getting better at getting the formatting correct the first time around. As for typos and all that, I’ll know better once I’ve gone through the proof copy. For some reason, typos are easier to see in the hard copy.

I ordered two proof copies … one for me and one for my husband. They arrived on Monday and it’s still a thrill to see something I wrote in print. I hope it never stops being a thrill.

What I could do without is the anxiety I feel at the thought of actually publishing the thing.

With any luck … ha, ha, yes I’m a nerd at heart … the novel will be available for purchase on Amazon by the end of August. Oh and, while I was proof reading the digital manuscript, I started working on a second Orwell Gasteyer novel. I’m titling it, “Out of a Clear Blue Sky.” I’m already about 47,000 words (190 pages in a 6″x9″ trimmed paperback) into it. I’m having as much fun writing the second one as I did the first one.

Quote courtesy of The Writing Practice