So one of the things that I’ve been doing/worrying about/working on/driving myself insane over is the decision to take publishing more seriously.

Here’s the overall picture: I quit my job (editor) in 2011 to go to graduate school. I had everything carefully calculated. Enough savings to get my master’s degree and then spend several months job-searching while I made it to R’s high school graduation before I needed to find a job. After his high school graduation, I, of course, would be more or less free to move anywhere, so if counseling wasn’t working out, I could get myself a non-telecommuting job as an editor anywhere–maybe Berkeley, Indiana, New Jersey. Wherever the jobs were, there I could go. (As long as I could bring Zelda, of course.)

Doesn’t that sound well-planned? Self-publishing was irrelevant, just a fun little side deal. Unexpected, however, was that 2011-2012 would be the worst years of my life and I would drop out of graduate school and wallow in… nope, not being mean to myself. That I would drop out of graduate school and spend a rocky year struggling with bereavement-induced severe depression.

In June, R graduates high school. I will not have my master’s degree. Every sensible bone in my body tells me it’s time to start looking for a job as an editor and be ready to move where it takes me. All the less-sensible bones are stubbornly saying, no, no, no. Not going to do that. I like Florida. I like my house. I want to stay here. And I don’t want to edit anymore. I want to write.

So the completely crazy bones–they’re investing money that I don’t really have and time that I could be spending working on my resume into starting up a publishing business and thinking about actually marketing my books.

The first step was to hire a designer to make me the covers above.

Tell me you love them.

Tell me they’d make you more likely to buy my books (despite the fact that if you’re reading my blog, it’s kinda a sure thing that you already got at least one of them).

Tell that I haven’t wasted my money and that I don’t need to be spending my time polishing my resume instead of sending my cover designer emails that say, “okay, that’s nice but what if…”

Don’t tell me how you’d make them better, because that ship has sailed, these are the final designs. And yes, I could have done lots of rounds of looking for feedback and maybe I should have but when I’m in an insecure space, having lots of people tell me what I could be doing better is actually more likely to send me crawling under the covers for a day or two than be productive.

But if you have an editor job for me… well, we could talk.

Or if you want to say lovely things about those covers, well, that would work, too.

PS A Lonely Magic–still going well. I made myself cry today–always a good sign!