April almost come and gone is usually my favorite time of year, before the black flies arrive, but not this year. They are already here and making their horrible presence known. I wish I could find a silver lining to the suffering they bring, but there is none. Unless you can count getting inside with a good excuse when the day is absolutely beautiful otherwise. But trying to bring out a book in a couple of months means a lot of preparatory work; right now it involves putting together a marketing plan and figuring out the best way to distribute the baby when it arrives, whether it's ebooks or traditional paperbacks. I don't believe in spelling out the details involved, because I prefer to produce the work with a magician's sleight of hand and preserve some of the mystery for the general public. I mean, do you really want to know the benefits of going with Amazon versus the independent bookstore, or the ins and outs of social media for writers, or Google rankings for websites? Okay maybe you do, but I don't want to talk about it. But believe me, being an independent self-published author is a bundle of work. Add to that lesson plans for Spanish classes for the end of the year, summer plans for the family, spring preparation of the vegetable garden, and an eye operation, (old scar tissue - too much time in the out-of-doors as a youngster), and you could say my plate is full, thank you very much. But, I like it this way. When I'm busy I'm not thinking about which foot to put forward and am less likely to trip. A basketball coach once told me the time you get injured in a game is when you relax, and I've remembered that rule and applied it to life in general. Whatever you're doing, do it with intensity and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the results. I'm not going to knock meticulous planning, but sometimes when a task seems overwhelming, the trick is to dive in and start flailing until you see some clarity. So that's not me running from the black flies, that's me figuring out what to do to make my next book, LATITUDES - A Story of Coming Home, a best-seller. 

 

Anthony Caplan is a writer, blogger, teacher and homesteader in New Hampshire. He is the author of the novels Birdman, French Pond Road, and the forthcoming Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home, due out at the end of June from Hope Mountain Press. Find out more about him and his work at http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com.