Somewhere Over the Sun

If someone has ever told you to fear the blank white page, they are wrong. The blank white page is actually one of the best things that can happen to a writer. Nothing has gone wrong yet, nothing that doesn’t work, a world of opportunities ahead. It’d be like someone telling you to fear a fuel gauge pointing to the letter F. All you have to do is accelerate. 

By all means, be afraid that you will not get there safely. That you shall be mangled by the journey. That you will lose more than you gain along the way. Fear the things that will come at you, the people that might try to destroy you. Fear how well you are built to resist collisions, whether you can keep momentum when you have slowed down to a near halt far away from your destination. Fear that you will battle through the journey and no one will have cared, or noticed. Or that, no matter how much you have already battled, people insist that you are not there yet.

And once you have moved past the fear of the blank white page, understand that all these other, bigger, realer fears, have the exact same solution. Every problem or fear or obstacle a writer faces can be dealt with simply: by writing. 

I’ve been indulging in my creativity lately and haven’t taken the time to give you guys updates about the novel. Sales are still trickling through, but word-of-mouth takes time, and most of the reviewers I’ve sent the book to still haven’t had the chance to get to them. An upcoming review and interview over at Girls Just Reading has been pushed back to next week. For you fellow aspiring novelists, make sure you’re equipped with some patience.

The e-book version of Somewhere Over the Sun will be available in about a week. That includes Kindle, Nook and Apple products. I’ll let you know as soon as I do when those are officially out. That should help boost sales a little bit.

I recently received a burst of Tumblr attention for my post “Letter to a Young Novelist” which was inspired by the reading of the book, “Letters to a Young Novelist” by Mario Vargas Llosa. I wanted to say how overwhelmed and appreciative I am of the positive reactions to this little piece. I hope future pieces I post will inspire you to the same or greater degree.

Coming up very soon: a tiny excerpt from the novel, which I hope you’ll love enough to check out what my book is about and maybe drop a few dollars to get it.