Back in January, I asked my husband to read through my novel. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, and I didn’t trust my own judgment as to its quality. I asked him to read it, letting him know that if he wanted to stop at any time, he should feel free to do so and I wouldn’t mind. If he could just let me know where the narrative lost him, then I would be content.
Content to toss the electronic file into an electronic door and allow it to gather “dust” for the rest of my life.
He was reading a long series at the time, and I really didn’t want to bug him about reading my novel, so I didn’t say anything until a week or so ago. He had finished his series and was starting on something else, so I asked him if he was ever going to read it.
I really should have said something sooner.
He had forgotten all about my request, all about my novel. It was only in my mind that it had such a burning importance that I had to keep myself from asking him every day whether he had started it, liked it, stopped it, something????
I re-downloaded the file, which he somehow had deleted from his Kindle, or it had never been loaded. I thought it was, because I thought I opened it on his computer to check and make sure the formatting wasn’t messed up. But it was a long time ago.
And once he began to read it, I could then try in earnest not to bug him about it.
But he made that point moot by finishing in just a couple days. He didn’t have to stop reading. And he did in fact like it. He may have called it “awesome.”
So I’m going to publish it, after at least one more trusted reader gets their eyes upon it. I won’t be able to back down after posting this. I must remember, not every book is for every reader. There are one star reviews on every book.
Oddly enough, after making the decision to publish this work, my brain started churning with the beginning of another one, a story whose title has been floating in my head for some time, waiting, I suppose, until it knew I would let it out to play.