Drained

The  publication of my last book drained me more than I expected. kdp (kindle direct publishing) at first wasn't too bad because I had made sure while writing my book to format it the way kdp wants it formatted for it to look good on a kindle ereader. The problems came later. Everything seemed to be just a tiny bit different than they were last year. Not a big thing usually, but one thing led to another and nothing seemed to interconnect with or be related to the next thing.

It's sort of like being instructed in jumping rope and they forget to tell you that you need a rope long enough but not too long, and leave you to figure it out. Then they forget to tell you that you have to swing the rope over your head with both hands but don't tell you or show you how exactly it's done. Think about it. I felt most of the time when reading their instructions they had left out a key item, and sure enough they had. I had to keep going back and re-reading everything while looking for that key word or phrase I may have missed the first, second or third time I read it. The last time I missed something I was ready to hit the publish button, but when I did, I would get an error message. Finally, I left it alone for a couple of days. I don't know if I thought little elves would come in and while I wasn't looking, make it all better, or I just couldn't stand to be that close and still fail.

Finally, I sat down one morning and and started going through the things I couldn't change when re-publishing. I found one thing in that list that I had changed. I went back to the page and while I was hovering over the box, a little message popped up, a message I had never seen before, telling me what I was supposed to do. I followed the instructions and BINGO!, I was able to publish my book.

It's had such an unsettling effect on me, I haven't been able to even think about writing the next book. I decided to take a short vacation and think about nothing except happy and fun things. Yesterday my daughter got married and we all had a great time, a happy and fun thing. Today my husband and I sat around and relaxed, played with the dog, watched a little TV, and just did what we felt like doing. Tonight I'm feeling much better. I just have to keep thinking about the good times.

MURDER BY THE DARK COVE OF DECEIT is now available on Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook.