The thing about writing is that you never stop learning. Whether its learning about the craft of writing, learning about who your audience is, learning about marketing or publishing, or learning about how things float in space so that you can describe them. This week has been a huge learning curve on the marketing front.

The excitement mounted as I built up to doing a cover reveal for my first novel, Alien a la Carte. I had my post ready to go on facebook, I had my post ready to go on my website. I planned what I wanted to tweet. I had my ducks in a row … or so I thought.

I invited a facebook audience to my kickoff, and at 2pm in a moment of anticipation (for me at least), my facebook post dropped as scheduled … but I had not accounted for “New” facebook, and thus, my wonderful cover was not only not revealed, but my post looked barren and too short. I sent out my tweet, only to realise I had forgotten the important hashtags that might get it out to the people I most wanted to see it.

I had a plan, so where did I go wrong? I forgot to follow the plan to the letter. I let my excitement get away from me.

In my daytime non-superhero job, I would have been vilified for not following the plan. Its drilled into us that we plan to work and work the plan, that’s how we roll. At home, owing to a number of issues, not least, the Covid confusion, plans often go by the way, and resiliency and humour comes to the fore.

Am I embarrassed. Yes. Did I potentially lose readership because of this upset. Perhaps. But I can see the light side of the situation. I was able to post my cover eventually with a tag that says “Are you concerned that there is no spaceship on the cover of my book about a spaceship?”. I went back to my plan and posted some of the short excerpts of the novel on twitter. I dusted off my burnt ego and returned to the fore.

I used to run away at this point. I would have decided not to publish, to quit while I was down. But not any more. As I said, writing is all about learning, and I have finally learned not to run away in the face of adversity.

In fact, just like Bae, the main character in my novel (couldn’t resist a plug there), I decided to get quirky instead. My book will launch soon. I’m doing final edits now, and may have something exciting to announce about that too.