Launch Week

Wow, what a crazy week this has been. Less than a month ago, my novel Programmed Cell Death was still not finished. But people kept asking me when it would be on sale. So, in order to create some artificial pressure to put on myself to get the damn thing finished once and for all, I decided on a release date, and I started telling everyone: the book will go on sale on July 5, 2019.

Well, today is that day.

And I’m very happy to say that I finished writing the last missing chapter last week, on June 30th. Cutting it close, I know. So the main text of the novel has been finished for a few days now, but this week I had to learn much more about formatting than I ever knew before. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I was starting from scratch. But there are a lot of variables here, a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous. I upgraded my writing software recently and had to learn a few new tricks to get the compiler working the way I want it to. Now I can produce Kindle ebooks with relative ease, and soon I’ll be putting together the paperback version.
But there was a lot more going on this week besides formatting the actual book. I had to come up with a lot of promotional material (which I hate doing), and on top of that I had to do a bunch of tedious fiddling with behind-the-scenes website stuff in preparation for my first-ever book launch.

I could go into so much more detail on all of these things but I don’t have time right now because I’m still not finished with everything (of course) and THE BOOK GOES ON SALE TONIGHT.

Most of all I just want to say THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to my incredibly patient and loving wife Sara, who has believed in me from day one, six years ago.

-Jon