Completed II

Book #2:  Published.

It happened over the weekend with not nearly the amount of sweat - or tears -  at the end as last time.  It took me some few hours to figure out the conversion to Kindle instead of the five days of last time.  I learned another valuable lesson as well:  wait until everything (Amazon, CreateSpace, and Kindle) is available before announcing they're available.

I'm happy about the book. It's not as long as my first one, but then again it's not meant to the same as the first one.  It's meant to answer a simple question - well, a question anyway, not so sure about the simple -  rather than propose a way of doing things. 

The interesting thing to me is how much less time this took than the first go around.  I believe the first manuscript was well over a year in writing and publishing.  This time is was 4 months or less.  The idea was again generated by a blog post - once again pointing out that this entire process of blogging has impacted my life in more ways than just letting me write. This blog has not only provided me with a sort of ongoing journal and way to communicate with my family and friends (especially since the move), it has become a mechanism for learning to regularly write and generating ideas that become other things.

A pleasant surprise was simply the fact that this was a bit easier to write this time. Things flowed faster.  The writing was a little better.  The editing process was especially a better, as I learned from last time where my typical errors occur (quotation mark, thy name is evil).  All in all, a good experience all around.

Like the first book, do I expect to make money on it?  Again, probably not.  I'm covering costs at this point, which is more than I can say for many other hobbies and projects I've undertaken in the past.  I'll make a little bit I'm sure - enough to buy myself one of those signposts of accomplishment I keep reminding others about.

The next book has to come, of course - now I'm hooked.  Fortunately, November is National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), the national exercise in writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  I've got my characters, my title and my plot.  I need only set digital ink to paper.

It's good to celebrate achievements.  But it's just as good to be on to the next one.