Stay in Your Lane

The problem with other people is that they make me feel inadequate. Totally not their fault, of course. It's all on me. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Of course, thinking about Eleanor Roosevelt makes me feel inadequate, too. Did you know she was married to a president and was a staunch advocate for civil rights, women's rights, and human rights? She gave her own press conferences!

Anyway, regardless of Eleanor Roosevelt's awesomeness, the fact is that I often start my day feeling pretty good about myself. When my shoes match, there's gas in my car, and the kid at the coffee shop calls me Miss instead of Ma'am, it seems like everything's coming up Kim. But then I make the mistake of striking up a conversation with someone – at work, or writing group, or the coffee shop. That person tells me about their excellent promotion at work. Or how they sold their house in 12 hours for more than the asking price. I notice that not only do their shoes match each other, but they also match the handbag and belt.

Suddenly I'm deflated. So what about my stupid matching shoes? This kid serving me coffee and calling me "Miss" just sold his late grandfather's 1964 Mustang for $50,000.

Logically I know that if someone else is successful or looks good or has generous dead relatives, it doesn't diminish me, my choices, and the great things I have. But logic doesn't have any bearing on feelings. I'm still left with a case of petty jealousy and second-guessing every decision I've ever made that led me down a path to not buying the matching handbag or finding a valuable 50-year-old car in my garage.

The other day I was at the coffee shop – again. Don't judge. I've seen you there, too. At the next table was a young woman complaining to an older woman who appeared to be her grandmother that some girl she had gone to high school with had just gotten married to a successful lawyer and bought a house.

The grandmother said, "You want to get married? What about college?"

"No, I don't really want to get married now," the girl replied. "But I'm living in a dorm room the size of a refrigerator box and spending half my life studying at the library. Meanwhile a girl my age – who was always a jerk in school, by the way – married a guy with money and gets to decorate her new four-bedroom house. It's crappy."

Grandma smiled and patted her granddaughter's hand. "Stay in your lane, sweetheart."

"Huh?"

"Stay in your lane. Keep your eyes on what's ahead of you and work toward your goals. If you focus on what everyone around you seems to be doing, you'll go crazy."

"That's easy to say, but I'm staring down the barrel of two more years of dorm food and a date with the library every Saturday night just to get my bachelors degree. Then more years for dental school, then paying back student loans. By the time I get around to finding a husband, we'll have to spend our honeymoon in the retirement home."

"Think of the money you'll save on the reception if your guests only eat Jell-o and Ensure," Grandma said with a chuckle.

The girl groaned, and Grandma added, "Like I said, stay in your lane. You made your choices and they're good ones. They're not easy to accomplish, but they're worth accomplishing and you'll be so glad when you're running your own dental practice. Meanwhile, this friend of yours might not be so lucky in the future. I hope things work out well for her, but you never know what's really going on in someone else's life. What if her lawyer husband is an arrogant pain in the neck? Or the roof on her new house leaks? What if the place is built on an ancient burial ground and it's haunted?"

"Haunted? Seriously?"

Grandma shrugged. "You just never know what's going on in someone else's lane. It could be haunted. The important thing is to keep your eyes on your lane and don't worry about what's going on in someone else's."

That's about when I thought I should stop eavesdropping on the conversation. Grandma seemed pretty smart, and I didn't want her to notice that some strange woman in the coffee shop was hanging on her every word.

No, the irony isn't lost on me that by eavesdropping I picked up some great advice about staying in my own lane and not focusing on what other people are doing. But irony aside, Grandma reminded me that I'm not in some imaginary competition with the rest of the world. It's better to ignore everyone travelling on either side of me and just focus on my road ahead. There are 7 billion ways to live a life in the world today, and I can't do all of them. It doesn't matter if the people travelling on either side of me are driving $50,000 inherited Mustangs or carrying Coach bags or are speeding to their literary agents' offices to sign multi-book contracts. Stay in your lane and be grateful that I have a car, was able to pull on a pair of shoes – matching or not – and had enough gas to get on the freeway.

But still, that classic Mustang would be a sweet ride.

Third(ish) Time's the Charm

New Stones cover!

The third time's the charm. I certainly hope so. At least when it comes to book covers for my novel Stones of Abraxas. Technically, Stones has had four covers, which means "Fourth time's the charm," but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Plus, one of those four covers never actually landed on a published copy of the book. It was a shame, too, because that was a cool cover. Unfortunately, the publisher who had commissioned it went out of business before the book ever came out. Such is the horror lurking around the corner for every author.

Original 2006 cover

Anyway, back to my third time's the charm book cover. Stones of Abraxas is my first published book. It's a funny, exciting young adult fantasy novel that was released in 2006 by Medallion Press. Its cover was an awesome original oil painting that depicts one of my favorite scenes from the book. Days before the book's release, though, that nameless horror lurking around the corner jumped out right in my face: Medallion Press announced that they were ending their young adult line. I ran around like a woman possessed, arranging book signings and author visits, but without a publisher to help with promotion or to publish the Abraxas sequel, there was little hope. The book was out of print quickly.

That's when I found Publisher #2. They wanted to re-release Stones, and they were going to publish the sequel Heroes of Abraxas. Much rejoicing ensued at the Sullivan household. One morning I received an email from Publisher #2 with a beautiful cover for the new edition of Stones. We needed new cover art since the first Stones cover belonged to Publisher #1. The new cover was beautiful, though, and the rejoicing at chez Sullivan continued. Then, that very afternoon, another email arrived. This one said that Publisher #2 was going out of business. My book was losing yet another publisher – and this one before the book was even released. The rejoicing ended abruptly.

First self- pubbed cover

 Shortly after this literary tragedy, I got the bright idea to self-publish my Abraxas books. I was still getting the occasional email from people who had read Stones and who wanted to know what happened in the sequel. So I researched cover artists and chose one who wasn't insanely expensive. The resulting covers were colorful, and the finished books from Create Space, Smashwords, and Kindle Direct were high quality. I was even able to edit Stones just the way I wanted it since I was my own publisher. But sales were disappointing.

One day I was browsing Twitter and read a Tweet from a company called SelfPubBookCovers. It said that if you've got a good book, but it's not selling, maybe the cover's to blame. I liked my colorful self-pubbed Abraxas covers, but in truth, I had always suspected they looked too young for the books. These are young adult books with main characters who start off as 12 and 14 years old. The kid on the cover of Stones looks like he's in kindergarten. 

Abraxas sequel

That Tweet got me thinking, so I asked my writing group what they thought of the covers. Frowns around the table. Suggestions about where I could get a new cover. Ideas about what the covers should look like. The next thing I knew, I was pouring over the zillions of book covers that artists have for sale at www.SelfPubBookCovers.com. I ended up selecting two by the artist diversepixel, and she even helped me customize them for my books at no extra charge.

Check out the phenomenal results here and at the top of this blog. Better yet, visit my website for excerpts of the books.

The moral of this story is: You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but since everyone does, yours better be awesome.