formatting is tedious, and other woes

I feel a little cross-eyed right now, and the word "chapter" has ceased to hold meaning for the moment. Next book, I plan the formatting more carefully so there's less to fix at the end. Four different versions later, the book has been uploaded to several sites. One is still processing its two different versions, so tomorrow is when I plan to post the official "it's a book" post, assuming the site's finished processing things (if not, I'll post and add links to the site once they are available).

I mostly feel good about the whole thing, but there is definitely some "oh dang it, I just wrote a piece of rubbish and am now trying to sell it" mixed in there. I doubt my book is the best book ever (if such a thing could be calculated), but I don't think it's terrible, either. I've been working on it so long it's hard to tell. Now that I'm done with this one, it's time to start work on the second, which is mostly in pieces. I have a beginning bit, and an ending bit, and then scattered scenes for the middle. Ironically, the third book is more complete than the second one, but there are rather important plot points from book 2 that need to be established before I release book 3. I'd like to release book 2 this fall if I can make it happen. Book 2 will also probably be longer than book 1, which is a short novel (though it appears longer or shorter depending on which ebook version you're looking at).

The high of finally having completed this is tempered by some family stuff that's been happening. This has been something of a good distraction, but I doubt the high will last much more than a few days, since it looks like we'll be making an unscheduled trip to my hometown to visit my family within the next week or two. It's a strange place to be, with lots of conflicting emotions, and we can't afford to just drop everything to go now and say goodbye in person, since two trips down in short succession is too expensive for us at the moment. I'll probably write more about it later, but for now, this is enough. I didn't realize grieving so deeply would be part of the before stage, and I don't want to think about the after yet.

So in the meantime, I'm distracted by the book, but still waiting for the phone call that will signal a very large change in my family.