Hi everyone!  I’m really excited to be guest blogging at Behind the Rows today-thanks Amanda!  I was wracking my brains trying to think of something interesting to write when it hit me…I decided to write about how you know you’re an author!  I’ve done a few guest posts on other blogs, and I’ve stuck to telling everyone all about my book, why I went Indie, etc., etc…I wanted to do something different today.  I think for anybody else who writes out there, you’ll be able to relate, and for anybody who doesn’t write, you might get a behind the scenes look and a laugh.  So here we go: You know you’re an author when…

You’re a dreamer!  You have to be able to dream to write.  And then you have to be able to dream to go the extra step and put your book out there for sale.  You have to be a dreamer to see the opportunities, the possibilities of what might happen if you just try.

You hear voices in your head!  And you listen to them!  They might start off small and only speak on occasion but before long they won’t shut up and they take over your life until you finally succumb to them and do what they say: write it all down!  You write down who they are, the story of their life, their ups and downs, the conversations they have with you…anything and everything.  And if for some reason, they stop talking, you panic and beg them to speak to you again or send you another voice to talk to! 

You finish writing down everything the voices told you to and voila! You’re a parent!  You have a book; it’s your new baby.  Or at least it feels that way.  You tend to be overprotective of it, but at the same time you want to send it out on its own. You’re obsessive about it.  You wake up and it’s the first thing you think about…you go to sleep and it’s the last thing on your mind.  You want it to stand on its own two feet (or maybe book covers?) and find its place in the world.  You want it to find people who will love it just like you do.  You want it to find its own niche in the world and rise all the way to the top!

So you maybe you send out query letters, or like me, maybe you decide to go Indie and publish it yourself.  Either way, you then turn into a beggar!  You talk about your book at any opportunity you can, just like parents talk about their kids.  You flaunt your book’s cover like it’s its baby picture.  You talk it up, and desperately beg people to take a chance, a risk, a gamble, and read it!  Some will and some won’t.

Then you become bipolar.  People will start to respond to your creation, your book.  You’ll make your first sale and you’ll swing way up high on an adrenaline rush.  You’ll feel like you did it, you conquered the world…with that first sale anything is possible!  You’ll sell more and set a new record.  But then maybe a few days will go by and you won’t sell any more books and you’ll swing way down low, feeling defeated.  But wait, you make some more sales and people actually respond to your book in a way you can see-they leave a review!  Some people will like your book and they’ll say nice things like it was a great story, a good read, entertaining, engaging characters, a fresh take on things…and you’ll swing way back up on that rush.  But then the inevitable happens and some people don’t like your baby, your book, and they’ll say things like it was predictable, or boring, or they just couldn’t relate or get into it…you’ll feel rejected and swing way back down low…Up, down, up, down-it’s constant!

Lastly you become a stalker!  Yes, I said it.  Your book is out there, up for sale, along with a whole lot of other books.  So you start wondering how all these other “parents” are doing.  You might read some of their books and if you like them and you’re anything like me, you go Google them and see who they are.  You go to their website or blog and read about why they wrote their book, how they wrote it, their success stories and their failures.  You identify with them and you can’t help it-you compare what’s happening with you and your book to them and theirs.  Their successes boost you up and give you the feeling that if they’re doing it, you can too.  Their failures remind you of your own and show you that all authors out there share a common thread.