Our Indie Author ARC Launch: The Long Road to Here

At the time I’m writing this, the indie author ARC launch for our epic romantasy offering, What God Has Ordained, is official — at least, the advance reader copy of it is. I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you what it took to get here, because we writers especially can feel so isolated when we’re bringing these works into being. Some of you are in the middle of your own long, dark road, writing through self-doubt, and I hope this serves as a kind of light that lets you know that you are not alone in it.

It Was, Almost Literally, Like Giving Birth

I don’t say that lightly. I had two pregnancies, and gave birth to two children.

If you didn’t already know, Michael and I have been writing and building the World of Menelon together, one careful piece at a time, since 1994. We know this world. We know these characters. And still — still — getting this particular book from first draft to ARC-ready felt like one of the hardest things we’ve ever done together.

The manuscript itself went through more rounds of revision than I care to count. There were last-minute structural decisions, insert scenes written at the eleventh hour, and two read-aloud passes, each taking the better part of a week — Michael and I reading to each other, listening for the places where the prose fought itself, catching typos on the fly, adjusting pacing by ear. It was slow, deliberate work, and it was some of the best time we’ve spent together as co-authors.

But the manuscript was only part of it.

The Rest of Our Lives Just Kept Happening

While we were finishing What God Has Ordained, we were also rebuilding Metaphor Publications from the ground up. The website needed a complete overhaul — new theme, new plugins, new SEO strategy, all implemented one careful step at a time. There were days when I lost hours of work to machine fuckery, days when the site went completely dark because of a redirect loop buried in an .htaccess file I’d never heard of before, days when I cried out of sheer frustration — and then took a deep breath, sat back down, and tried again anyway.

We launched a blog content strategy and committed to it — one post a week, every week, rotating through the audience segments we had painstakingly identified. We restarted a newsletter. Michael posted regular Instagram reels about the writing life and the World of Menelon. We researched, wrote, optimized, cussed a lot, troubleshot, and just kept showing up for the work, every day.

I lost my walking buddy last month — my neighbor packed up and moved to Washington to be with her children. I miss her more than I expected to. Another friend is struggling to keep her job while dealing with mystery illnesses that our local, rural medical care isn’t up to treating. My best friend has been deep in her own upheaval, packing up to relocate from Washington to Oregon, largely unavailable during these last few months.The sense of isolation crept up on me quietly, and then lingered.

Even as we kept plugging along toward our indie press book launch, Michael was managing a legal dispute over unauthorized listings of our first two books — a battle that has been grinding away in the background for months, the kind of slow-burn stress that never fully leaves your mind even when you’re not actively working on it. He carried that, and everything else, without complaint. And in that vein, I should pause here to offer thanks to our attorney, Paul S. Levine, for taking this legal battle on for us. We indie authors are not rich, have no influence, no political power, and that makes us easy targets for scammers. It means a lot to us that he was willing to step up and use his years of legal experience to fight for us and our books.

Through all of it, Michael has been my rock. Unfailingly, almost impossibly steady. The kind of partner who helped me believe that whatever was in front of us, we’d get through it. Together.

And Then, One Morning, We Were There

I am not going to pretend I’m not anxious. Beta readers cried happy tears over this manuscript, and I cried with them. But beta readers are not the same as strangers. Strangers have no investment in your feelings. Strangers will tell you the truth.

The ISBN was assigned. The front and back matter came together. The BookFunnel page went live. And suddenly, What God Has Ordained — this book we have poured years, tears, and sleepless nights into — was available for advance readers to request.

omg omg omg omg omg

That’s what ARC readers are for. And asking for their honesty, after everything it took to get here, is taking every ounce of courage I can muster. It’s a peculiar kind of courage, isn’t it. It’s the kind that lets you stand up and say: Here it is. Here is the thing I made. Please tell me what you really think.

Why I’m Telling You This

I do think that we do ourselves and others a disservice when we only share the highs, and then show the finished product. When we post the cover reveal, the indie press book launch, and the glowing reviews, then skip over the part where we were writing through self-doubt. Or sitting on the floor in a state of complete overwhelm, wondering if we still had what it takes.

I wanted to say it. And I wanted you to know: You are not alone in the hard parts. Not the self-doubt, not in the technical disasters, not in the loneliness that can settle over a creative life when everything is demanding your attention at once. Remember, every journey involves mucking through the valleys as well as admiring the views from the heights.

We’re on a height right now, Michael and I. It feels wonderful. And it feels like we earned every inch of it.

If you’d like to be part of What God Has Ordained’s ARC reader team, we’d love to have you. Request your advance copy through Book Funnel — and thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for being here to share this with us.