It's in

My first novel is out in the world. Amazon has a contest called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and a few days ago Claudia discovered it and sent me a link. It took a lot of work, and a lot of help from friends willing to give up their time and test read Roja for me, but I did it, and they did too. Roja is entered as of yesterday.

It still doesn't feel real. Yesterday, anyone who saw me would have thought I was inhaling laughing gas. I walked around the house giggling every five minutes and not knowing what to do. For months that book has been the focus of every bit of free time that I had, and now, it's going to sink or swim on it's own merits. I wonder when it will feel real.

It would never have gotten finished without the help I received. Even after my wife and I went through Roja page by page, every test reader found other mistakes that we both missed. Just another example of how writing a book is a different game than writing short stories.

So what's next? I won't know anything on Roja, good or bad, for a while, so I'm going to finish a short story that I started, and rewrite one that has been sitting idle for a bit. Then, it's off to the next book.

That's how I'm going to keep writing.