It took me ages and a lot of blood, sweat and tears - eventhough crying is still a skill I need to re-learn - to finally finish my very first officially printed book, but what happened afterward was highly unexpected:
People from all over the world appear to be interested in buying it!
It almost makes me want to hide ( again ) - not unlike one of the book's characters, the introverted Hermit The Crab. Or perhaps another - even better example - The Fear Hare .
What to do now?
Is this perhaps the downside of fame?
Did I change my life around and move all the way to the Portuguese countryside, only to get famous and get under the spotlights again?
The above is kind of a joke ( even though there's always a layer of truth behind good my jokes.
Now I might be somewhat of a hermit, and I still have my fears ( as a byproduct from living in cities and being brainwashed for 35 years, as well as being passed on genetically from previous generations ) but I am not afraid of fame.
Or let me rephrase that: I am not getting famous ( yet ), it just sounded fun to write and speculate about this and I felt inspired after finding a comment on my previous book writing post, left by one of my friends from down under
In fact, @ryivhnn typed the following:
Up until you become famous and then suddenly EVERYONE wants one of those severely limited seecond editions ;D
It was a response on me stating that I would probably go for a 100 copies of the second edition of my first book ( where I'd first thought of only printing 22 physical copies )
She was 'joking' that a 100 might not be enough and that 222 might be a good idea.
For some context and conversation I invite you to read my previous blog entry The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus - Thoughts on the Second Edition of my First Book as well as the comment section underneath it.
To come back to me saying that people from all over the world are interested, that isn't a joke. It's the truth. In fact, aside from Australia, I have friends in Japan, Chile, Venezuela, South Africa, Cambodia and Spain who are interested, as well as a bunch of people in my motherland ( The Netherlands ) and multiple in Portugal, where I have been living since 2018. And then there's probably people who either missed my posts where I wrote that my first book is finished or who were just too busy and distracted to reply ( yet ).
All of the above ( aside from the interest in my book coming from Portugal and The Netherlands ) is an effect of having built some strong connections and friendships on Hive ( and previously Steemit ) in the last 4 and a half years, as well as of the sharing of my dino stories and the process of my book writing on here for 2 and a half years now.
It's pretty cool to see what this can lead to and it encourages me to continue on the creative ( dino ) path that I started taking, back in 2019. Knowing myself, I would probably still have continued if I wouldn't receive all this positive feedback but it sure would have felt different.
So Thank you! if you're reading this and you're part of this group,
even if you haven't ordered my book yet ;<)
This afternoon, the weather was lovely, after some weird days with strange skies and an overall wierd energy in the air, so I decided to go to a river beach, on walking distance from my house. I also decided to bring a copy of the first edition of my own book with me.
Aside from talking to a bunch of new people that I met out there, I re-read part of my book and took some last notes ( of changes for the second edition ).
I am getting very close to actually finishing that second edition, after a week or two of not feeling it.
This version is the one that many of you, all-over-the-world, have been waiting for for quite some time ;<)
Just a little more patience and I'll post on here about it being finished ( a version for print as well as for E-readers ) and on the first book(s) being snail mailed to some of you out there, in exchange for our beloved Hive coin or Hive Backed Dollars.
A friendly short-armed raptor hug,
Hypersensitivosaurus