New Journey

The last eight months have been filled with changes, blessings, and excitement-more than most people would expect to encounter in a lifetime, much less within a year! Just within the first week of September, I started a new teaching job in a new city, was involved in a rollover car crash (miraculously walked away from it!), got another car, obtained a townhouse, and had one of my books accepted for publication! Talk about a whirlwind. . .we were also recently blessed with a rescue dog, a white Lab/Pit mix named Rocky. He is a smart 14 month old who is excelling at whatever he is taught. I was going to continue my previous blog, Life Is A Freelance Job! but I had it in my heart to change the name and focus to Foursquare Mom. The four squares stand for the four important areas of my life: God, Family, Writing, and Teaching. The blog posts I write will center on those four areas. My faith has brought me to where I am, a very happy place in my life after many years of struggling. I know God is not done with me yet and has many more blessings and adventures for me and my family. I'm looking forward to what is in store for us in the days and months ahead. My manuscript was accepted by the publisher last month and is in production right now. I have written and had published many articles over the years, as well as having written over seven books. This will be the first book to be published and as hard as it is to traditionally publish, I decided to go with a print-on-demand publisher. I will be sharing what that experience is like and what happens afterwards. I'm hoping of course that the book does well so we'll see. I've been making a marketing plan, checking out some popular and interesting books on the topic, such as Guerrilla Marketing For Writers. It is very interesting and very helpful! I've been getting some really good ideas and am glad I know a lot of people that I can ask for help in spreading the word about my book. One of the best tips they mentioned in the book is the fact that it is important to use as many different ways to promote the book as possible. In other words, don't put all my eggs in one basket! The more ways I use to promote my book, the greater chance I will have of success. It makes sense, we'll see how it turns out. I intend on using my son and his friends to help spread the word-that's not considered child labor is it? I'm not paying them so that doesn't make it slave labor does it? :) I don't think so. I like to think of it as helping instill a work ethic and preserve future monetary reserves, and in the case of my son, preserving his chance of an inheritance! Should hear some updates from the publisher this week since I haven't heard much in the last two weeks except that it has been approved for production and they'll get things going. It is supposed to take approximately ten weeks. I'm excited and nervous, almost like preparing for the birth of a new child! It was definitely painful, but in a joyful expectant way.