My novel Dancing in the Purple Rain has been out in the wild for 2 months now, and I'm not sure what I should be feeling.
I want to say that it feels "good", but I have to admit that the launch was anticlimactic.
If you're willing to stick around, I'll try to unravel what is going on in my head and explain why things feel… well… like they just "are".
ARCs and Pre-Lauch Chaos
I released the advanced reader copies (ARCs) of Dancing in the Purple Rain (DPR) back in April—a full 4 months prior to launch. But before I could get to that point, there was an insane amount of work to do to ensure that the typeset documents actually looked good and were fully functional. And I had to load the book into all of the distribution channels, attempting to get it loaded into the review sites before sending out the ARCs.
It was a huge list of things to do… and I felt like I would never finish.
Then the ARCs were out, and I shifted into marketing mode: setting up social media graphics, writing emails that were to go out to my ARC and street teams, and all the rest that goes with it.
Then my body decided to rebel… and fell sick. The entire winter season, I was fighting off one bug or another. And in the weeks leading up to launch, it meant that I fell into this don't-want-to-do-it mode with the various tasks associated with launch. Balls got dropped and kicked away into the corner, never to be found again.
And of course, this meant that the To-Do list never shrank in size… and overwhelm set in—only compounding the don't-want-to-do-it mode. It really was an endless cycle that I was struggling to get out of.
When I recognized what was happening, I said to myself, "You know what? I'm not doing it." And I felt better about not doing certain things, and I was able to get on with doing what I needed to do—sort of.
As we headed into week one of July. I was still suffering from this odd don't-want-to-do-it paralysis compounded by winter illnesses, falling into "productive procrastination", doing things that were "useful" but not necessary or relevant. Early July (a month before launch), when I had my appointment with my accountability buddy, she helped me reason out what was going on in my brain.
I have no problems with sharing my knowledge with others. I am perfectly okay to pitch to blogs about writing craft. I'm excited to pitch for teaching opportunities. But when it comes to pitching about "how good I am…" Yeah, I struggle with that.
I don't like tooting my own horn. Not really. Taking advantage of sharing my knowledge in an educational forum comes naturally to me. Telling others how fantastic my fiction is and why they should read it… that's where I trip up.
But there is another side of me that is also reminding my other half-brain that this is the long game. Traction might not happen for a few books yet. And I think when I'm in the middle of launching my second novel (but my fifth book), I'll likely be in a much more comfortable position.
The Launch Anticlimax
When I finally managed to get out of the productive-procrastination mode, I did a lot of promo writing, getting blogs ready to go and special DPR-launch newsletter sequences. Social media posts were scheduled up the wazoo.
And all of that work became my saving grace.
2 weeks before launch, I came down with my fifth illness of the winter season. And whatever the bug was, it was nasty. I was very sick. And so many things that I had planned to do as part of my launch (including recording a video of me reading the first chapter of the novel) were scrapped in favor of sleep. I just didn't have the mental capacity for any of it.
Instead, I let the automated scheduling take over… while I just slept—or at least tried to sleep, because even sleep was a problem because of how much I was coughing.
Let's just say that I have a new appreciation of those stories about the elderly cracking ribs when they cough or sneeze. I get it now. I totally get it.
And when the novel went live, it was met with a bombardment of spam and scams.
OMG, I lost count of how many emails came in, flooding my inbox for days. I was well into the triple digits. To make matters worse, I wasn't getting just one copy of these scam emails. I was getting them in duplicate, telling me exactly how the scammers got my email; they scraped them from my website… both emails that were being attacked. For the first time ever, I couldn't rely on just SpamAssassin from my hosting provider. I actually had to enable the separate spam filter on my email editing program (I use ThunderBird).
In an odd way, I'm flattered that the scammers thought that I (and my book) warranted their attention, but that was serious Coo-coo-ville.
Post-Launch
Ignoring the spam chaos…
After the book came out, I would get messages from overseas writing buddies who had purchased print versions. One complained about how her husband managed to nab the book before she could read it—and she had been looking forward to reading it… but would sadly have to wait. Another cursed me for keeping them away from the tasks that they needed to do for daily life. They couldn't put the book down.
I mean, "Sorry, but not sorry?"
And the reviews continue to trickle in, many of them making me laugh or encouraging me to look at the story in a way that I had never considered before.
It wasn't my intention to have parallels to what is happening within global politics, but clearly those parallels are there. And I had no idea that the way Mike sees the world is exactly how some people with certain psychological conditions see the world. That was a surprise to me (and enlightening).
But even after the book came out, I felt "meh" about the launch. Don't get me wrong, I'm super proud of what I've achieved. And I'm over the moon regarding the story that I've created (and ecstatic that so many readers are finding it "really good"). But I'm no longer invested in that book to the same level that I was at the start of the year.
I've already moved on to books being released in 2026 and 2027.
I know that I need to continue marketing this book for many years to come. Being a standalone, it will never have sequels to help market it. And the moment I stop marketing it will be the moment that I'll stop seeing sales… probably.
But even then, I'm not in a rush to put so much effort into marketing just the one book when I know that other books are just around the corner.
This post-launch feeling is really hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been through this. As a writer, we spend so much time and effort in crafting the best novel that we can. We then get attacked by the self-doubt monster as we move into editing—and some writers find this phase crippling. But even after we've edited that manuscript into a polished gem, we still have so much to do just to get the book out there. And when it's finally out there, it's an exhausted, "Yay."
Our fuel to keep going no longer comes from the book that has just been released, but in the stories that have yet to see the light of day.
And that's where I'm at: looking to the future and the projects on the horizon.
Have you read Dancing in the Purple Rain yet?
If you have read my novel Dancing in the Purple Rain, I would love it if you could leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, or any other review site. Good or bad, I love reading those reviews.
And if you enjoyed the book, please tell your networks. Help spread the word of the book’s existence.
But if you have yet to get your hands on a copy, perhaps now is the time to buy a copy for yourself. Alternatively, put in a request for the book at your local library. I know that Dancing in the Purple Rain has already found the shelves of several libraries from around the world—at least that’s what WorldCat is telling me.
Dancing in the Purple Rain
In a poisoned world, Michaella, a genetically engineered telepath, uncovers a web of lies and implanted memories when her closest friend is killed. Michaella must now rely only on her personal AI and a 200-year-old playing card as she attempts to maintain her grip on reality to save herself and future generations from becoming emotionless automatons.
The rain starts August 1st, 2025.
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