{"id":28998,"date":"2016-04-14T08:53:10","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T12:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=28998"},"modified":"2016-04-14T08:53:10","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T12:53:10","slug":"alex-segura-bringing-balance-to-the-book-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2016\/04\/14\/alex-segura-bringing-balance-to-the-book-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Segura: Bringing Balance To The Book Force"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, Alex Segura. Author. Editor. Publicity genius. Raconteur. Rocket surgeon. Four dogs in a trenchcoat. What hasn’t been said about him already? Alex has a new book out — Down the Darkest Street, the next Pete Fernandez mystery — and he wanted to stop by and write a blog post about his experiences here, and of course he’s also a new father so the first draft of his blog post was printed out and mailed to me… and it was mostly just pictures of him staring awake into an iPhone camera late at night while a child wails over his shoulder, shellacking his neck with white baby frothpuke. Thankfully, his second draft was better. So, here he us, talking about the role of author, new father, and guy with a book out. How do you balance it all?<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all been there. Hunched over our laptops, hitting refresh on our book\u2019s Amazon ranking\/Goodreads score\/Bamboozle status. It\u2019s a week before your novel is out and you\u2019re stretching, STRETCHING for anything you can do to move the needle that one, tiny bit to get it over the hump. To give it that one extra inch of visibility that\u2019ll help it succeed. Another guest blog? Another sponsored post? What will Reviewer X say? Maybe I should email my agent about that one thing\u2026.or my editor?<\/p>\n

The events have been booked. The interviews have happened. The blurbs have been collected. You\u2019ve done the Twitters and Facebook\u2019d yourself silly. So you sit in a dark room and stare at your screen. You jump as your email signals a new message. You groan when you realize it\u2019s a coupon code for Costco.<\/p>\n

Pre-book anxiety\u2019s a killer, huh?<\/p>\n

A piercing shriek cuts through our dark apartment. I speed-walk to the bedroom and try to help my wife soothe our seven-week old son back to sleep, hopeful his zzz batting average is higher tonight than it had been earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

Oh, right. We just had a kid. Forgot to mention that.<\/p>\n

I knew going into 2016 that it was going to be a big, challenging time. I\u2019d finally found a home for my mystery novel series with the wonderful folks at Polis Books. They were not only putting out my new novel, but re-issuing my first. Two books in a year? Ok, I got this. Two books on top of a pretty intense day job promoting and editing comics? I got this, seriously. Two books, intense day job and a baby.<\/p>\n

I got this?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to fast forward past all the stuff you should know already: I love our kid, he\u2019s amazing and cute, the first time he smiled melted my heart and it\u2019s been insanely stressful and exhausting. I\u2019m not speeding by this because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s important – it sure as hell is – but because all of that kid stuff? All the late-night wake ups, the doctor visits that are routine (to them, not you), the rage that comes when your only clean footsie has buttons not a zipper, the barrage of advice you get from everyone – from your closest relatives to the guy at your coffee shop – all of it adds up. It\u2019s intense and each thing, good or bad, feels huge.<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s important. Capital \u201cI\u201d important.<\/p>\n

While I can make glib remarks about bringing three babies into the world this year, that\u2019s not true\/fair and a disservice to the kid, who is the only actual human we\u2019ve brought into existence in 2016. So, my point is – \u201cBaby Important\u201d puts \u201cBook Important\u201d into super, hyper-focused perspective.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean that in a holier-than-thou BOOKS ARE BENEATH ME way. Not at all. Silent City<\/em> and Down the Darkest Street<\/em> – those books have my heart in them. I first put pen to paper on my debut almost 10 (!!!!!) years ago. Getting them published has been a long, winding journey – one a lot of authors, I\u2019m sure, can relate to. There\u2019s a lot of me, my life and my ups and downs in there. They\u2019re important milestones for me. Their success is, of course, important to me. But they\u2019re not Baby Important.<\/p>\n

What kind of perspective does having a tiny, 12-pound human that depends on you for its survival bring, you ask?<\/p>\n

The kind of perspective that allows you to realize when you\u2019ve done enough. You\u2019ve set the plates and utensils on the table and prepared the food. All you can do now is sit back and watch people eat your meal. The perspective that allows you to take a breath, step back and let the chips fall where they may. The books are written.<\/p>\n

Like Delilah Dawson said in this very inspiring series of tweets<\/a><\/strong><\/span> – there\u2019s no top of the mountain when it comes to writing\/publishing. Even if I write the bestselling-est of bestsellers, I\u2019ll probably write another book after that, no matter what. The writing, for me, is something I have to get out and process and create. It\u2019s going to happen anyway. I need to write. Would it be great to get billions of people to read my books? Hell yes. But those are the possible perks, not the targets.<\/p>\n

And while I can\u2019t say I don\u2019t read reviews, refresh my rankings or spend more time in my email inbox than is probably healthy, I do it less frequently now. Not because I don\u2019t care, but because I\u2019d rather put my phone down and play with my kid.<\/p>\n

HAHAHA – wait, you thought it ends there? Not quite. The writing stuff never stops, even when the promotion phase is complete. Case in point? I\u2019ve got a third novel in my agent\u2019s hands and half of a fourth screaming at me to finish. That might SOUND like it\u2019s good – but it also means there\u2019s a lot of writing work to be done, like revisions, copyedits, you name it. The beat goes on. And while taking care of Pete Fernandez, my series character, is nothing like trying to raise a newborn – they are definitely two things that need constant upkeep, in their own way. It\u2019s just about finding the right perspective – and balance.<\/p>\n

I hope they get along.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Alex Segura is a novelist and comic book writer. His Miami crime novels <\/em>Silent City and <\/em>Down the Darkest Street – featuring washed up detective Pete Fernandez – are out now from Polis Books. You can find him at <\/em>www.alexsegura.com<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span> or on Twitter <\/em>@alex_segura<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>.\u00a0<\/em>He also edits THE SHIELD from Dark Circle Comics – co-written by some guy named Wendig.<\/em><\/p>\n

Down The Darkest Street: Indiebound<\/span><\/a> | Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ah, Alex Segura. Author. Editor. Publicity genius. Raconteur. Rocket surgeon. Four dogs in a trenchcoat. What hasn’t been said about him already? Alex has a new book out — Down the Darkest Street, the next Pete Fernandez mystery — and he wanted to stop by and write a blog post about his experiences here, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-7xI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29000,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28998\/revisions\/29000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}