Athazagoraphobia

Just in case you think you’re mentally fit, how many phobias on this list make you go, “Oh crap.”

The upheaval caused by lots of change at our publisher has caused me to feel athazagoraphobia, or the fear of being forgotten or ignored.

Today: a sign! Tim and I received author copies of our new novel. That’s a good thing, because we’ve been buying copies to send to reviewers. A single copy of the novel is not expensive, but multiple copies begin to add up, and we’re still subsidizing Spa What New Reason Can We Find to See River.

Also, the Canadian Amazon site has a Booklist review, and bookseller Marlon spotted an ad for the novel in Instinct magazine. So although we’re not yet sure who’s looking out for us, there’s evidence that someone is.

Greg has written several insightful posts explaining realities about the publishing business. As a writer, you spend the early part of your career thinking, If I can just get published… Then a miraculous combination of timing, agressiveness, and dumb luck makes it happen. Which is when you find out what a big pond your little book is swimming in, and that no matter how many nets, life preservers, and floats you throw at it, its only hope of not sinking into oblivion comes from readers who notice it, read it, and find a way to tell people about it. (And bless every one of you who has done that for us.) Only the rare niche market author gets a book tour, reviews in the mainstream press, or ads in major publications. And it’s conventional wisdom that signings are not well-attended and sell very few books unless you’re already a well-known author. Or you’re related to or had an affair with someone rich, famous, or reviled.

The amazing thing is that the gnawing anxiety about a novel recurs with every single new book! Maybe this is different for Anne Rice, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, et al., but I suspect it’s not. Each time you send one of your offspring out to sink or swim, it’s with the same mixture of pride, humility, dread, hope, and fear.

Which reminds me of a term I learned from dialogue Tim wrote in the next TJB novel: atychiphobia. Fear of failure.