Revising

I've been learning that even though it makes for fewer blog posts, it is sometimes best to keep things a little closer to the vest. Hence, in the past few weeks I've been keeping fingers crossed about submissions, revising the manuscript for the sequel and making changes that are an ever-evolving organism and also stressing about home/work/real life things.
The details of all these things are better left unsaid for fear of spoiling or jinxing anything.
The feeling I hate is that any loss of inertia feels like I'm slacking or failing. I know in my rational mind that it is part of the ebb and flow of everything I do but it is hard to compete with the paranoid self-doubting part of the brain that always seems to have longer claws. Who's with me?
Book sales have stagnated but the book has been out for a while now so that is to be expected. It is a sinking feeling to know you've peaked and, now that award season is pretty much over with, to know that the outlets for getting the book out there are down to almost zero. Part of being an author I suppose. No one I've met, large publisher or small, feels like their book has gotten quite enough publicity. Guess you can never be too rich or too skinny either.
With the entire world talking about Dragon tattoos it is a wonder there is room on anyone's shelf for anything else. (another in my arguments against hardcovers. For the casual reader the $75 they are going to spend on that trilogy I'd bet wipes out their book buying budget for the year. Cheaper books means more books, I think anyway.)
I am glad to see several books getting the attention they deserve like A Night of Long Knives and A Bad Day for Pretty.
One on the radar I am looking forward to is The Cold Kiss by John Rector. It sounds very much up my alley and I am watching with interest all the buzz he is generating right now in the week since the book has come out. Glad to see a debut author really making a breakthrough. I'm excited to go to his signing at the end of the month.
So while I wait to hear on several different things I try not to feel like my feet are in cement and what little momentum I had is dissipating. Just keep on plugging away just like all the others out there. I'm not special and I take comfort in that. It's the Iowa boy in me. I do my best to make my own little contribution to the conversation but I'll never have the loudest voice in the room. It's been 40 years like that and it's unlikely to change.
More revisions loom and then it will be time to turn to the next project. But oh, what to choose from the long list of ideas....