One year of TINTE
Though I’m nearly a month late, This is Not the End has now officially been in the world for (over) a year! And what a truly bizarre year it’s been. In order to celebrate, I went full narcissist and embroidered my book cover design because, well, why not?
I know how jerky it sounds to say this, but I never doubted that one day I’d have a book published - again, I know that sounds really awful, but I’m an incredibly goal-oriented person, and this has always been my life’s primary goal, ever since I was eight years old. And I do have the unshakeable faith in myself (misplaced though it may sometimes be) that I will get what I want if I work hard enough and I have enough discipline.
So not only is that a lot of pressure on myself to achieve this goal, but it also puts a lot of pressure on the situation once that goal is achieved for it to be exactly as I expected. And that has disaster written alllllll over it.
Because while it’s been amazing seeing my name in print on my book, it’s still been a strange experience. Nothing really changed exactly, at least not for my career. I still work in digital marketing, I still go to the grocery store and buy my own food. I feel like people have these misconceptions that once your book comes out, you sell millions of copies and your life changes drastically forever, but for the vast majority of authors, that’s just not the case.
I even made a TikTok video about this 👇
And this isn’t a slight on the industry - I’ve had an incredibly positive experience both for myself and in comparison to other writers when it comes to my publishing journey. But the attention my book has received has been underwhelming, the reviews have been middling - and though I know it’s not right, this can make the whole experience just feel a little flat at times.
THAT SAID. There have also been a number of really positive experiences that I really need to do a better job reminding myself of. In this year since I quite literally achieved my dream, I have:
Spoken at two festivals
Experienced the high of someone I’ve never met before reaching out to me to say they liked my writing and that my book meant something to them
Laughed at the really funny bad reviews of my book (some of them are SO GOOD)
Given presentations to a few groups of students about being an author, my writing and my process
Written and sold my second book, which comes out in the US and UK next year!
Met some amazing new authors and celebrated their achievements
Been let into the UKYA community, which is filled with incredibly kind and supportive authors and fans
So that whole whinefest above was an effort to be realistic and kind of take a bit of the stigma away from authors who are embarrassed about the fact that their debut books just sort of exist without much fanfare. And the second part is to remind myself that so much good has come out of the last year, even if it didn’t look like I always pictured it would.
And now, onto the next book!