The first of many

This is the day I published my book.

Don't get excited. You aren't? Really? You know, a little excitement wouldn't kill you.

Today I officially uploaded my book, Guardians of Suncast Dale, to Amazon.com to be sold online. This is a day that I've been waiting on for a long time. I've worked well and hard for this day, and this day marks the beginning of a whole new life for me, the life of a professional writer.

Why am I not so excited?

Because this is the day I also made the first of many publishing mistakes. In this case, I screwed up the formatting for Kindle so the final copy is going to look funny until I can get it corrected, and that's going to take a few days. So I can't really tell anyone about this because I don't want to send anyone to a copy that looks weird. I wrote the page on Microsoft Word, and the pages for Word are very different than those on Kindle, and that's something I really should have looked at before confirming the submission.

I'm going to correct it, the real, final version will get out, and this will become a funny story. The first of many, because if you think that this is going to be the last screw-up, you are mistaken. This is before I even address the typos that might be in there, especially that one typo that completely changes the meaning.

My wife and I still laugh at an earlier draft in which my hero is fighting someone and "licks his head" instead of "kicks his head."

There is a takeaway. Mistakes happen, and sometimes you won't see them until after it's too late. There's no shame in it, and with Amazon, I'm going to get it corrected very easily. As a writer, you have to learn to expect mistakes. They are inevitable. Don't fear them, just learn from them for next time. That's what I'm going to do.

This is also the day I registered charlesbfrench.com and moved into the world of official domain owner.