Fear and Loathing in Publisher-land

Wraparound cover art for EVERY SKY A STRANGER by the talented Chris Howard

Every Sky a Stranger is my 10th novel. So I've been around the block a bit with being my own publisher. To the tune of 10 novels, 2 anthologies, and 1 short story collection. That's 13 ebooks and 12 paperbacks. (The short story collection is ebook only). That doesn't count the numerous books I've helped other writers format for publication.

So when I tell you I know how to do this, I know how to do this. Including formatting for paperback editions to both Amazon kdp and IngramSpark. 

Over 2 weeks ago, I uploaded a revised cover file for the paperback edition of Every Sky, as the first iteration didn't go far enough into the bleed area. No problem. Amazon's timeframe to review is within 72 hours. Over a week went by and the files were still locked "in review". 

The Support Runaround

On Sept 21st I initiated a support chat. It got escalated (whatever that really means). I received no reply to my request for updates over the next several days.  

On Sept 23rd, I  requested a call back & actually spoke to someone. They had no idea why the book was still in review. (Remember - I've done this for 9 other novels & 2 anthologies, PLUS the cover & interior was approved at IngramSpark, so I know it's not a problem with the files.)

Apparently my earlier support chat was closed because the team it was sent to didn't know how to fix the problem. Not that they told me or anything. 

So this agent created a new ticket with a new case number. 

According to Amazon, I'm supposed to update to the final files by 9/25 for a 9/29 pub date. 

Guess how confident I am that this will get fixed?

Shouting into the Void 

So, overnight I received an email that the cover image needed to be extended past the bleed lines. 

Great, right? Specific information. 

Except it's the *same* email I got over 2 weeks ago after which we made those changes & reuploaded the cover that got stuck in review for 2 weeks.

The same cover that was accepted/approved at IngramSpark.

Then I went to my kdp back end to see the paperback was magically out of review and ready to publish. Yay? However they needed to push the publication date further out. Because of their delay. Not optimal.
 

I did a second support call to figure out which it was: yes I could publish/no the cover isn't okay. 

Hey, it's Schrödinger's paperback.

Support guy said the ticket is still being worked on and that I can't publish until I hear back.

Okay... But if the book is out of review, the ticket is moot. Right?

Apparently not. And according to the support person, either I'll have to publish in October or I'll be able to have the book live for 9/29. 

Definitely Schrödinger's paperback.

Just for kicks and giggles, I went to the KDP message center where there is a helpful transcript of my support call. And it's status is RESOLVED. 

Um. No? 

Amount of faith I have in Amazon kdp? ZERO PERCENT. 

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When did we lose the spark?

2 hands holding sparklers some long ago New Year's Eve

When I was a very young child, my Great Uncle Davie brought me an old manual typewriter. He was always stopping by the house with trinkets and pockets full of candy - usually a dutch candy called hopjes. He was a dear old man and I thought he was quite magical. 

The typewriter was an LC Smith and Corona and it delighted me for a number of reasons, not the least of which was LC are my initials. And I also think some part of me knew he saw me - even at the young age of 6 or 7 - as a writer. 

I loved banging away at that typewriter. The keys were purely mechanical. I have no idea where he found it, but it wasn't in the best of shape and the keys often jammed. But that didn't matter to me. I wrote little stories on it that felt real to me because they were typed. No childish scrawl for my masterpieces!

All through my primary schooling and into high school, I wrote poems and stories. I even included one of my short stories with my college application and it gave me a get-out-of-jail-free pass for Freshman Composition. 

Yeah. I thought I was all that in those days. (Until I had to write my first college paper, but that's another story for another time.) Mostly I wrote for the sheer pleasure of wordcraft. Fitting the right words together felt much as I imagine a master woodworker feels using pegs to join wood smoothly and perfectly without glue or hardware. It didn't matter what other people thought of my writing because it pleased me. 

Then somewhere over the next few years in college, something changed. I became insecure and uncertain. Part of that was being exposed to a universe of writing I had not even known existed. Suddenly my juvenile work felt, well, juvenile. And I didn't have the life experience or the knowledge of craft to take my writing further. Nor did I have the discipline back then. (Again, another story.) 

I didn't stop writing, but I did stop sharing my work. 

In my senior year of college, a friend pestered me to submit to the Dean's Prize in Creative Literature. I put him off for weeks until at the deadline, I submitted a sheaf of poetry. And I only did so because I knew I wouldn't win and that it didn't matter because I would be graduating and no one would know my work was worthless. 

So. One of my poems won. And there was a monetary prize. It was such a confusing moment. What was more true? When I loved what I created? When I understood it wasn't more than immature ramblings? When some outside arbiter deemed it worthy? 

Where is the balance between joy in creativity and its assigned value? How do we navigate those waters?

When my now adult children were in elementary school, I volunteered to run poetry workshops for several different grades between 2nd and 5th. I always loved to be a guest in the classroom. (Teachers are amazing humans. Truly.) My experience was interesting and educational in ways not at all related to the poetry workshop activities I facilitated. 

Children in the 2nd grade have a huge variability in their ability to read and manage language. What they may lack in skills, they make up for in utter enthusiasm. They enjoy wordplay and rhythm and rhyme. Working with 2nd graders was both fun and also exhausting. 

3rd grade was the sweet spot. Children in the 3rd grade have a basic facility with language and (most importantly) still come to wordplay with joy and spark. When we shared the work they wrote, each student was proud of what they had created and celebrated what their classmates had written. Never did a 3rd grader approach me with a poem to ask if I liked it, or if it was good. They liked it and that was all that mattered. 

In working with 4th and 5th graders, my experience was very different. The students approached the exercises as if they were a test. Every single one of them would approach me for consultation and ask if I liked it. If they had done it right. Was it good. And that was heartbreaking. Gone was the spark and the joy and the play. 

If there is a single critical skill in creating, it is playfulness. And when we cede our power to an external judge, we lose it. 

So how do we keep that spark into adulthood? What about those of us who choose to write for publication? We live in a society where the ultimate arbiter of worthiness is attention - and most often the attention of the dollar. But even in art forms that earn little money, going 'viral' is the ultimate goal. As if what we create is unimportant unless it is noticed. It's a weird variant of the "prosperity doctrine" where if you are successful, it's because you deserved to be successful. If your work doesn't achieve notice, well, it wasn't good enough. 

There's that external valuation metric again. 

If we wind the clock back to childhood, I see that young girl typing with her index fingers on a large mechanical typewriter, her fingertips blackened with ink from the ribbon that often needed to be unjammed from the keys. She was joyful. She lived for the process of making something from nothing. It was enough to create. What other people thought didn't matter. 

I just published my 10th novel. 10 novels in 14 years. 6 year-old-me sitting at that typewriter would have shrugged and kept typing. She knew she was going to grow up to be a writer.  She didn't think about reviews and sales and rankings and mentions. She had stories to tell and told them. 

I need to remind myself of who I was. And who I can still be.  

 

 

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Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

New release is in pre-order and other news

Cover art by Chris Howard

The long awaited (at least by me!) sequel to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD is here! EVERY SKY A STRANGER is book 2 of Entangled Realities, a metaphysical science fiction trilogy set in worlds scattered throughout the multiverse where memory can't be trusted and reality itself is being manipulated for political gain.

The ebook is available now for preorder at every major online retailer, and directly from me through Gumroad -  links on my website. The print edition will be released when the ebook is published on 9/29/26. 

Praise for Every Sky a Stranger:

"A vivid, extraordinary novel. Cohen masterfully depicts a full-bodied cast of characters navigating a chaotic multiverse that strips certainty, revealing who they are and what they're willing to sacrifice to save it. Brava!"

—THERESE WALSH, author of The Moon Sisters and founder of Writer Unboxed

 

"… hold on. Beyond logic. Beyond sense. If there is a single future where hope wins, fight for it."

When an EMT with PTSD falls through a portal into an alternate version of Boston, three friends from different realities in the multiverse, each of whom owe him a debt, attempt a rescue before conflicting memories of a life he never led destroy his mind. But Traveling through the world walls is unpredictable and the three – a doctor, a truthscryer, and the daughter of Travelers - become separated, each ending up where they least wish to be, powerless to aid their companion.

The doctor contends with an alternate timeline where her drinking jeopardizes her medical license, the truthscryer faces a life of rejection and despair because of his gift of seeing, and the young girl is trapped at the secret agency which engineered her father's death. All become enmeshed in a struggle within that agency which risks destabilizing the fragile fabric of reality and isolating the lost travelers far from home. If they are to survive, they must hold faith in one another across all time and space.  

In other news...

 The audiobook for LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD will be released shortly! Stay tuned for links to where it will be available!

And even more news 

I'm healed enough from my tree pruning injury and subsequent hand surgery in July to be back on the potters wheel, back to knitting, and almost back to my regular speed touch typing. Let my experience be a cautionary tale—never ever rush when using power tools. I was extremely lucky and should have a full recovery.  

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Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

 

Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

What would your Focus be?

Several stitch markers I use in my knitting and crochet

In the world of Entangled Realities, there are those who can move between worlds of the multiverse. These Travelers are taught to use a small item, called a focus, to keep them grounded so they don't lose themselves in transit. 

One of my characters - Reina - is a young girl who is the daughter of two Travelers. When she faces her first journey, she needs to choose an item for her focus and remembers her father asking her what represents home. 

She chooses a beach stone. It has special significance to her past, as revealed in the story. 

I wondered what I would choose. What represents home to me? I've lived in many places across my 62 years on the planet. I've moved through many phases of my life, each with different identities: child, student, wife, professional, mother, writer, farmer, crafter. Which of these is "home". Not in a literal place, but in a sense of core being. What small item could I carry that would always lead me back to myself?

Reina's parents both choose their wedding rings as their focus. While my spouse is definitely home base for me, I don't wear a wedding ring. We both have them, but life as a farmer and a potter is not conducive to wearing jewelry of any kind. 

A pottery tool was under consideration, but that is just part of who I am. Same thing for a fancy pen to symbolize my life as a writer. But I don't typically write with a pen and a computer would be too awkward to carry. 

Then I glanced at my knitting project bag and the box of stitch markers. 

Perfect.

They are small, light, easy to connect to a piece of clothing. And while they do the literal work of keeping me on track in a knitting or crochet pattern, they represent something more. Of holding my place in the fabric of the world. Marking where I am and giving me the sense of where I need to go. 

Plus - and amusingly - they seem to shift in and out of phase, getting lost in the multiverse of the sofa cushions and randomly getting found again.  

So that's my focus sorted out. Stitch markers. Something that wouldn't be noticed or commented on. Something that has personal and metaphorical meaning. Something to anchor me to myself in the swirling confusion of the multiverse.

How about you? What's your focus?

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Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

 

Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.