One Month Out

We're now one month out from the official release of "Etched in Fire". I'm finding it quite educational, trying to figure out how to promote it, finding sites that might be willing to review it, and generally slithering through the hoops that are held out for small press authors. How do I convince readers that, given fifty choices, mine is the book to buy and read? How do I convince reviewers that I am special? Don't we as authors all think we're special, when we turn out the best book we can? Otherwise we wouldn't be putting it out there.

The fact is, I'm far better with the printed word than with live people. If I were appended to a major publisher, they would do all this work for me, and I could just concentrate on the next sequel, or the next short story, or the next new project. I'm not entirely in the same boat as the self-published author, I know -- I do get some promotion from my publisher. But without my legwork, it won't go nearly as far as I'd like.

I didn't do any of this for "The Herd Lord", and that sank into quiet obscurity. So if I want "Etched in Fire" to succeed, I have to learn a lot, fast. Personally, I'd rather go fire-walking with my feet slathered in cooking oil. But I have spent the last four or so years of my life working on EIF: putting scenes down on paper and cutting them again; working on the boring minutia of line editing; changing entire character mindsets; working my way one step at a time through scenes that were emotionally difficult to write, and bulling my way through anyway. So I find myself looking up reviewers, trying to entice readers off of Facebook self-promotion sites, and trying to keep from removing large chunks of hair when I just don't know what to do next.

So I guess my next question is: Where did I put the cooking oil?