The Final Chapter

Wide fucking awake.

It’s not quite midnight. Well, I slept for about two hours, so maybe that’s just the way this shit goes.

I’ve struggled with sleep since Death woke me up. The accident didn’t change that. If anything, it just clarified the need to keep moving forward. To live each day like it’s my last. To make something out of whatever time I have left instead of assuming there will always be more of it.

But that level of commitment to legacy is fucking hard. No question.

My first two books were self-published through KDP. At the time, that made sense. Write the book. Publish the book. Put the fucking thing on Amazon. Congratulations, you’re an author.

Except apparently publishing a book and actually building a writing career are two very different fucking things.

I’m trying to get my books onto the New Mexico Book Association’s website, and that means getting them into the Ingram distribution system. So now I’m essentially publishing the fucking things again, this time through IngramSpark. Their machine offers broader distribution than just Amazon, which I suspect will be better for me in the long run.

But, like everything else in life, they fucking want money.

Of course they do.

Fine. If that’s what I have to do, that’s what I’m going to fucking do. Lesson learned. And when Undertow is finished, I’ll do it differently from the beginning.

Right now, though, I’ve put a hell of a lot more money into publishing these fucking books than I’ve received from selling them. I get that this is part of paying my dues. I’m buying my way onto the road, one ISBN, one book show, one fucking marketing expense at a time, hoping eventually enough people know my fucking name that the books start paying for themselves.

Maybe someday they even pay for me.

That’s the goal anyway.

Will I get there? No fucking clue.

The plan right now is to get this third book published, keep grinding through the marketing bullshit, keep getting my name out there, and then turn my attention toward my first novel-length piece of fiction. That one centers around a conversation with Death, and I want to take a shot at getting it traditionally published through one of the big publishers.

But fuck, that’s a long fucking road, and I haven’t even written the goddamned thing yet.

I’ve started it. It exists. There are words on a page. But Undertow is still looming over my shoulder, occupying that part of my brain where the next book wants to live. I can’t fully commit to the new story until Undertow is finished. I need to finish the fucking thing, send it out into the world, and move on.

So I guess that’s where I am tonight. Wide fucking awake, thinking about my writing career.

The funny part is what woke me up.

My work phone pinged.

An email from my day job.

And, hey, I’m in leadership, so of course I fucking looked. Then I fucking answered. One email became another, and next thing I knew I’d sent about half a dozen emails in the middle of the fucking night.

Eventually I shut the phone off, rolled over, and attempted something vaguely resembling sleep.

That’s when my brain decided it was time to discuss my writing career.

Because apparently midnight is when all major life decisions should be evaluated.

There’s something strangely appropriate about that, though. The job that pays me woke me up. The career I’m trying to build kept me awake.

Those are not the same thing.

I have a career. A pretty fucking good one, actually. I have responsibilities. People depend on me. I lead. I solve problems. I answer emails when the goddamned phone pings in the middle of the night.

But that career isn't the thing I want to carry with me to the end.

Writing is.

Writing feels like my final chapter.

Or, at least, that's the plan.

Life has taught me enough by now to know that nothing is written in stone. Maybe something completely unexpected happens. Maybe I snap one morning on the way to work and embark on a life of crime that ends with a volley of gunfire while I confront “the system.” (Pretty sure Michael Douglas already made that movie. Yes, I’m talking about Falling Down.)

But assuming I don't become the protagonist in a 1990s crime drama, this is where I think I'm headed: I want to write.

I want to publish books.

I want to become good enough at this craft that people I've never met recognize my fucking name on a cover.

I want shelves somewhere holding books I wrote.

I want stories wandering around in the world long after I'm no longer wandering around in it.

And maybe that's why I'm willing to spend the money. Maybe that's why I'll fuck around with another publishing platform, learn another system, pay another fee, go to another book show, hand another stranger a copy of something I poured myself into, and hope they decide to read the fucking thing.

Maybe that's why I keep writing when nobody is asking me to.

I'm building something I intend to leave behind.

My final chapter.

Not the last chapter I write. Fuck, I hope there are a lot of those. The final chapter of me. The thing I plan to keep doing until eventually Death comes back, presumably irritated that I slipped past the fucker the first four fucking times.

Yeah, I know. That's fucking morbid.

Whatever.

I've already met Death. I'm allowed to make plans with the motherfucker.

For now, though, it's after midnight. My work phone is finally quiet. The house is quiet. I should be sleeping.

And I'm sitting here writing.

Maybe that tells me everything I need to fucking know.