The Excitement of the Hurry Up & Wait
My book has been published but not fully released, More Photos of Summer/Fall Snow, Aspen Trees, and Sag Sky Town
Wed. Sept 18, 2024 - Hello Lovely Readers and Subscribers!
This past Sunday, I filled all the forms, made sure that all the Descriptions, Bios, Keywords, Categories, and all the things matched - then I pulled the trig… no, I pushed the Publish button at Draft2Digital and Google Play Books.
I published the first novel length story I wrote in 2016-2017 - A Quiver Full, Or How Mr. Darcy will Not Sit on that Sofa Again! The whole process was a huge build up to push a publish button for the eBook and the Print book. In the end, after I had published, the adventure of the last month felt like a complex, complicated blog post.
In fact, I liked the feeling of the long, complicated novel post publish button pushing so much, I wanted to gather more stories I have written and push the button…
Except, unlike blogging or posting here at SubStack, there was no immediate gratification and satisfaction of the post / book going live.
No, I had to wait a day or two or - heaven forfend - more days for big corporate and small indie online stores to make the book live. Every time that my phone’s notifications pinged me, my stomach would leap - “Is it another email saying another site has turned the book live?” - my gut would ask as it clenched a bit more.
A Quiver Full is now live on Apple, Kobo, and a few other eBook stores, as well as Barnes & Noble as an eBook & a Paperback. It is on pre-order status as a paperback at Amazon, but no Kindle yet. And Google Play Books warn that it may be 10 or more days - though this has not stopped me from checking their dashboard several times a day.
I had hoped to give you all the first chapter plus links today but it is not to be - I shall do it when Kindle goes live. Hopefully by tomorrow or Friday.
In the meantime, since my productivity has been catapulted into nervous hamster on the refresh the dashboard wheel mode, I will give you all some more photos from the last few days of… September Snow.
Update: I like to write these posts and schedule to publish them a few hours later; so that I have time to edit, add, subtract and not spam your email box with more than one a week. Since I saved this and set it to post this evening, I got The Email from Draft2Digital. A Quiver Full has been accepted at Amazon Kindle. Yay!
I am still going to wait until tomorrow to publish the first chapter of AQF with the cover art here at Ms. Jen’s Tidbits. Please forgive me in advance for two posts this week, but I don’t like to send you super long posts, as I want to respect your email box and/or SubStack app on your mobile.
Look what happened on Monday morning, it snowed! Ok, the snow was up at the 9,000 - 11,000+ feet level on Mt. Morgan south through to Wheeler Crest. We didn’t even get any rain at our location in the Long Valley Caldera, though it was wonderful to watch the interplay of big, dark clouds descend on the mountains, then move off and leave a gap of sunlight streaming down on to brand new snow, before a new cloud group moved onto the crests to make their mark.
There is a beautiful, only reached by hiking trail, high saddle valley full of autumnal aspen trees between Red Mountain and Mt. Morgan that was just on the edge of the snowline. So, I swapped out my 50mm lens for my 300mm prime lens and waited for the sunbeams to break through the cloud layer. As you can see from the photo below, the snow was still falling as I attempted to take this photo.
Because I couldn’t just sit here in the Long Valley Caldera at 6,900 ft with a long prime lens, so yesterday my Mom, the dogs, and I drove up to the 9,700~ ft level up Rock Creek road to Rock Creek Lake, where I did in person photographic investigation of September snow and Autumnal Aspen Trees for your delight.
The snow was patchy on the south side of Rock Creek Lake, but it appears to have had at least 2 inches of snow fall the day before. It was 49F / 9C when we went for our walk yesterday, with clouds darting by in the wind making the walk alternately nice and then nice and cold.
The views of the aspen tree colonies at the 9,000+ ft level were lovely, thus if you wish to trot up to the Eastern Sierra for some late September leaf peeping the lower levels at 7,000 ft around the June Lake Loop should be delightful in a week or two or three. Mono County has a Fall Colors dashboard with weekly reports to alert you when the colors will be best.
I hope you enjoyed a small trip into my hamster wheel of nerves publishing adventure and the September Snow & Aspen Trees of the last two days. Please feel free to share this Ms. Jen’s Tidbits Weekly Wednesday newsletter and to subscribe.
Many blessings and I hope the rest of your week is good,
Jenifer Hanen, aka Ms. Jen