1) Your due date is totally irrelevant. The last month before you deliver/publish is the L-O-N-G-E-S-T of your life.
2) You never know when you will get to sleep through the night or when you will be up all night tending to your baby.
3) You think life is hard when you’re pregnant. Then you have that baby and you are like, “Crap. PUT IT BACK! It was so much easier to take care of before it was out in the world!”
4) You are super proud of your baby and possibly unable to judge how rotten she is… because she’s yours. This is why you need other people. It takes a village. You need your Momma to tell you to quit holding her all the time and to remind you who you were BEFORE you had this kid. And you need your beta readers, agents and editors to tell you to QUIT WITH THE CAPSLOCK ALREADY, and to help you to learn to let go of the parts that weren’t good enough anyway.
5) Then at that moment… right before you push your baby into the world, you panic, “What was I thinking? How the hell am I supposed to know how to do this? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING!” That’s when all those people: your Momma, betas, agents and editors will rally around you and scream, text, and tweet you to tell you to, “PUUUUUUUUSHH!
6) It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It’s cover is shiny and flawless and your heart will ache when you look at it because you remember what it took to bring this life into the world. And you know without a doubt that your book will die without it’s mother tending to it. You take one more moment to gaze lovingly onto your exquisitely perfect cover before you get back to work.
They are so sweet when they’re sleeping.
7) You crack open your ARC for one last read through and whaddaya know? Typo’s AND poop happen. (See what I did there. I made ‘typo’ A typo. Stay with me.)
Something is stank up in here.
8 ) Once you’ve birthed that book baby, you don’t want to let it out of your sight. You want to cuddle, snuggle, and take it everywhere you go.
9) But you still want it to experience the world.
10) You’ll want to expose it to all sorts of new things while still protecting it from anything bad– like bullies and people who are power trippin’ on Goodreads’ and Amazon reviews.
Safety first.
11) Right before you start selling it to strangers. WAIT… that’s not the same.
Pre-order the Kindle edition of “Ketchup is a Vegetable” HERE, or order the paperback HERE! Or order a signed and personalized edition from my local indie store HERE! I sign, they ship! Yay TEAMWORK!