Hello world, it's Kate, and I am back from the land of craziness and picking up my blogging pen again, or at least turning on my wireless keyboard. I haven't blogged since March. Wow, how did that happen? Well, okay I know what happened. First, we were all told to stay home and behave ourselves due to COVID-19. Do you know just how uninspired I was without human interaction besides my husband, Tom? Apparently, I need people. I am a people person. I did not see that coming.
All writing stopped. I found myself playing games and putting together puzzles with Tom. And you know what? I really enjoyed the time we spent together. We were getting back to the basics from when we first started dating. Each night we were having fun with some activity and talking to each other. He was taking this whole locked up in the house thing way better than I anticipated. Ever since day one that I met my husband, he has always needed to be moving and doing something. That part didn't change, he still was doing things, but we were finding things at home to do together. So, while the stay at home orders were quite frustrating, I am appreciative of the time we had together without interruptions.
Around the end of May, I was starting to really write again and sent my first book to the editor. While I was waiting for the manuscript to come back with what I feel is the equivalent of the teacher's red pen from my editor, I was a mess. Here we were still in social distancing mode, I was working from home for my day job and my husband was an essential worker still working his full schedule. I tried to write after work but my mind was still on book one with the editor. What if she says it is horrible? Am I wasting my time? Queue the panic mode and indulging in every ounce of chocolate in the house. Thankfully, it did take the edge off my crazy.
June rolled in and my editor sent back my book and she loved it. I think I was finally able to take a deep breath and relax. Taking the next steps to get the cover and formatting done were both challenging by themselves and took up a lot of time (that is a whole other blog post). During all this I celebrated another birthday (they could stop anytime now) and we had family visit for a week. Overall it was a good month. We spent time by the pool and basically took it easy, not that you can do much else in Phoenix in the summer.
July came and went in a blur. The book was released on July 27th and the reviews that I received made me super happy. There is nothing better than a stranger saying that they read your book and loved it. Yeah, it is great when friends and family say they enjoyed your book, but when you get that validation from someone who doesn't know you, it is happiness on a whole other level.
Now, here we are in August and book two is with the editor and book three has a solid start. I have also been spending the summer working on making a connection with my readers through social media. Social media has always been a struggle for me, and I think I have the hang of Instagram now... Twitter... that little tweeting bird is still hard for me. My next step is that I want to pick my blogging pen back up. I feel like I have found a rhythm that works for me, and am looking forward to sharing my thoughts again with this blog.
I hope everyone is doing well and staying cool. I will be hiding from the 106 degree weather in Phoenix by writing diligently at my temporary office, also known as our dining table.
