August Wrap-Up

In Which I Produce a Single Perfect Strawberry

The tomato flowers are wilting in the heat, the carrots are stunted (but sweet!), and that *&^%#$& raccoon has discovered the strawberry bed. 

You know, the directions on the seed packets don't tell you even a tenth of what you need to know to produce actual food. Carrots are a cool-weather crop and tomato flowers will wilt without producing tomatoes if it's too hot, too dry, and too humid.

August in Virginia is all of those things.

Fortunately, the march toward publication was more successful, if absolutely nerve-wracking. Thirty years of preparation to be an author has culminated in a two-month crash course in branding, marketing, and graphic design, and even though I knew going in that I am not an expert in these things, it's something else when you're looking at a book cover and the question is not, do I like it, but, will it sell? Because that's what a book cover is for: to make people click it to learn more. And not even just people, but to get the right people to click it. The people who will be intrigued by the blurb and will enjoy the story.

The author is not the best person to answer that question. 

The author is also the absolute last person who should be writing Amazon blurbs. I have over a million words of story in my head, only 150,000 of which pertain to book one, and somehow those have to be distilled down to 300. Possibly the most rewritten 300 words in the history of literature. 

But I guess there's a metaphor in that. After all, it took lots of watering, fertilizing, and a pretty sophisticated anti-raccoon campaign to get that one perfect strawberry.

In time, it would be a beauty and a wonder.

-Traitor Son