Back with a Bang!

 

  (c) Amber Byers

Hello, dear blog readers! I hope you've all had a wonderful summer doing everything you love to do. Good news—I'm back! And not just here, but back with a bang! Summer was reinvigorating and as soon as autumn started, I was bursting with energy, ready to dive back into work again.

Things have been cruising right along too. I wrapped up my revisions over the summer, sent my book to my beta readers near the end of the summer, and began incorporating their comments early this fall. This was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had working on my book. I felt like I was sewing together little patches to make a beautiful quilt. For example, I realized that I had three characters playing different roles at the animal shelter where Sophie volunteers. So to simplify things, I combined them into one character and then went through and gave that character some unique characteristics to help readers recognize her. It was really fun jumping through the book and adding the details like that.

Then I sent the book to my proofreaders, finalized my cover, and thought okay, I'm ready to publish. Not quite. I have been dealing with formatting issues for about two weeks now. I won't bore you with details about mirror margins and embedded fonts, but I will say that this was one of the worst parts of my whole experience—my darkest moment (for those of you who don't know, that's a stereotypical plot point near the end of the story where you think the main character isn't going to pull through). But, like the stereotypical resolution, I overcame all odds and finally achieved success submitting both my paperback and e-book versions to Ingram Spark and Amazon last week. I am now awaiting a final review from both companies, so stay tuned for details about how to preorder soon!