Small encouragements.

Up to now I've just been enjoying the creative writing, without doing much about it.

I did have to step back and format "Freedy Filkins" and "Death of an Immortal", and I did have to work at coming up with covers, and I did have to figure out the procedures of how to join Amazon and Smashwords.  Those were all hurdles that I had to try to negotiate without interfering with the actual writing.

Other than that, I've avoided even thinking about what I need to do.

I'm still mostly ignoring it, but I can tell the day will come when I will have to learn the day to day mechanics of promoting my books.  It will be very distracting and I'm sort of hoping to delay that process for as long as possible, especially for as long as I'm on a creative roll.  I think the time is coming though, when I trust that this writing thing is real, that I'll have to risk it.

Meanwhile, I'm letting little encouragements motivate me to keep going.  Being in the Bulletin was nice.

I had my friend Paul come in yesterday.  I'd forgotten that I'd asked him to read my book.  This was dangerous because while Paul and I get along great, we seem to have completely different tastes in books and movies.  In fact, it's become somewhat of a joke between us that if Paul likes something, I won't and vice versa. 

So he announces,  "I read your book."

Oh, oh.

"And here's the thing ...  " he says with a frown.

"Yes?.......?"

"I loved it!  I thought it was great!"

"So you were surprised, eh?"

"No, I thought you had it in you, but I was amazed by how professional it was."

And so on.

Add this to my friend Bill who also liked it, but said he'd give me 4 stars out of 5.  "Write a review!" I exclaimed.

So, I know a couple of friends saying they like your book probably doesn't mean much to most people, but I think -- I hope -- I can gauge whether someone really means it -- especially if they are standing right in front of me.  When I'm told the same thing over Facebook or email, it's a little harder to gauge.  So I've gotten some very positive responses and some responses that seem positive but I can't really tell and I've gotten a number of people who have said they bought the book and then didn't say anything to me.   This last batch I figure fall in the camp of:  "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Anyway, these small encouragements are enough to keep me going.

Meanwhile I have to ask myself this question.

If Paul likes my book, and I almost never like the same books that Paul likes -- is that a good thing?