Yesterday marks a huge day for me as I finally published my first novel on Amazon and I’m pretty much…terrified. I spent a week going over the book one last time, addressing Heather’s recommendations (from Red Adept Reviews)  and then sat staring at my computer screen for a tortuously long time on the night of the 6th, before taking the plunge. I decided to enroll in Amazon’s KDP program, which means the digital selling of my book is exclusive to Kindle for at least 6 months. If you are an Amazon Prime member and own a Kindle, you can read my book for FREE using the ‘Lending Library’! After that, I can start selling on Nook and other platforms. Paperback copies will be available at a later date all depending on how this eBook process unfolds.

Right now, I need reviews and ‘likes’ on Amazon and abroad!

On my book’s Amazon page, just to the right of the cover you’ll see a graphic like the one above. Be generous and ‘like’ it – I will be in your debt. If you happen to purchase ‘The Mayfair Moon’, I would love a good review! :-) I’m also looking for book reviewers out there who might be interested in delving into my story and telling their readers what they think of it. So, if you know any personally, please send then my way!

As with any new author, I’m both excited and scared out of my mind, but this step in my lifelong journey to become a published author is (it feels like) long overdue, and despite being afraid, I’m also happy. :-)

I really hope you all like it!

I got my official Red Adept ‘Alpha Read’ results back today on my novel, ‘The Mayfair Moon’ and I couldn’t be more pleased and excited. My Alpha Reader was ‘Heather’ and she did exactly what I hoped she would do: She pointed out and described in detail everything that she DID NOT like. Honestly, I was worried that whoever read my novel might feel in some way obligated to sugarcoat the truth, but that was not the case. Heather was blunt and to the point, which is now helping me to make this book the best it can be. She has opened my mind to a few things I was unaware of and even confirmed a couple of things I myself thought was a bit ‘off’. I cannot stress enough to every writer out there how important it is to get someone who doesn’t know you and who would be less inclined to bias, to read your book before you consider publishing (self-published, indie and even traditional).  I am now on to the next step in my publishing process: another brief edit to address all of Heather’s recommendations and then on to the step that both terrifies and excites me: publishing.

Despite the mentioned negative, I’m very happy to say that her positive opinions greatly outweighed the negative and that she “really enjoyed it!” and hopes to “…get to read the sequel some day!”.

What a way to start a new year! I’ve been sick with nervousness since I sent Red Adept my manuscript, unable to write or do much of anything for fear of my Alpha Reader absolutely hating it. And now, I’m looking at my road to publication in a whole new way. I’m still scared to death, but I’m going into it with a lot more confidence! :-)

I know this might sound like some kind of prompted publicity, but it’s purely my UNprompted opinion and a big Thank You to Red Adept, but I would recommend Red Adept services to any aspiring published author and I personally will be using them for my future projects.

As for ‘The Mayfair Moon’, I am hoping to publish this month! So, I guess I better get back to work.

I left. Without my ticket.

When I got home I called Greyhound (their main headquarters, or whatever) to complain and to find out why there were no employees to print my ticket. I was upset, knowing I had purchased a non-refundable ticket and that I was going to have to go back to that awful station and wait an hour or more in it before I could board my bus and get the hell out of there. I expressed my concerns about being mugged and made it quite clear that if anything happened to me that I’d sue the shit out of them.

After I hung up I immediately called the station I had just left and after several minutes of busy signals and no answers, a girl finally answered. Her excuse for not being there was that she left to get breakfast at Mc Donald’s. Really? Must be nice to just leave like that whenever you want to during business hours and there be absolutely no one to pick up your slack.

Anyway, we had words and she was rude and I was rude back.

The night of my leave:

I was to board my bus at 1:10 a.m so I had to be there an hour early. My brother took me and we waited outside in the parking lot forever, and during our wait we were approached by a pimp/crack head/drug dealer! He kept coming up to the car window and I was so scared I just wanted to get out of there. Where were the security guards? Where were the cops? This place was crawling with EVIL! We watched a drug deal happen right there in front of the bus station, which once again was devoid of employees save two strange guys that seemed to like talking to the pimp. :-| Anyway, it was after 2:00a.m before my bus finally got there and when I got on I was forced to sit for two hours to Memphis with two drunks directly behind me, constantly saying extremely loud ‘motherfucker this’ and ‘motherfucker that’. They smelled so bad that I could have vomited if I let myself breathe like a normal person.

Then there was my bus driver, who like just about every Greyhound bus driver I’ve ever had the displeasure of being driven by, couldn’t seem to drive without swerving. Needless to say I did not sleep a wink from Little Rock all the way to Chicago. I guess if I was going to die in a fiery bus crash I wanted to watch it happen? I don’t know, but I couldn’t sleep and that was the longest 13 hour ride, ever.

{INSERT HAPPY CHICAGO TIMES HERE}

I dreaded getting back on a Greyhound to go back to Little Rock and I almost spent my car payment money to buy an Amtrak ticket instead. In fact, for a long time I was dead set on going home by train as I refused to step foot on another bus. When it came down to it, I knew I didn’t have the money and that I needed to stick it out (if I lived on the way back) and get it over with. Brian and I went to the Downtown Chicago station an hour before I was to board and once again, before I even got on things were awful. I stood in line forever to check my bags as the customer service woman talked on and on with two girls about everything but tickets and such. She didn’t care that people were waiting in line. Finally when it came my turn, she was just rude in general; the way she hardly looked at me when I spoke to her, how she wrinkled her nose when I asked her what gate I needed to board at. She didn’t even verbally answer my question, but rather stuck my ticket in front of me after writing my gate number on it. I wanted to smack that woman.

It got worse.

As Brian and I were sitting down and waiting on my bus to arrive, the same customer service woman was being so rude and nasty to an Asian lady because the Asian lady could not understand English. It was really sad because that poor woman was so distraught and upset that the Greyhound lady was being so horrible to her. At that point I was fuming! I was so close to walking up to that woman and telling her fat ass off.

Unsurprisingly, my bus was over an hour late. When I made it to Memphis again, I had to switch buses and ended up with a grouchy bitch for a driver that was as rude as the customer service woman in Chicago.

I’ve explained enough and won’t go into detail about what she did and said to me and other passengers, but I think I’ve summed it all up.

So that’s my story. I will never ride a Greyhound bus again for anything. I hate to say it, but Greyhound is truly the international travel for crack heads, loudmouths and other people like them. The stations are nasty. The buses are nasty. The bus drivers (most of those I’ve encountered anyway) are horrible with people, rude, falling-asleep-at-the-wheel, threatening and thoughtless. Their schedules are whacked out with layovers as long as 6 hours or more, overcrowded buses, rude passengers that want to take up both seats and will make it known they don’t want you sitting next to them.

It’s a horrible way to travel.

Enough said.

The first strike: their cafe’ was closed.

The second strike, there was a wedding scheduled for that day…

…so some of the place was blocked off to ‘outsiders’.

Anyway.

It started out alright. The beginning of this hour long trail was nicely landscaped and showed promise, but as we walked along further, that promise and the flowers began to quickly thin out. So, their brochure and the web site make this ‘garden’ out to be a beautiful place with thousands of flowers everywhere and waterfalls and unicorns and such. We were really excited to go.

But we realized fairly early in the walk that there were more flowers in my brother’s front yard than there were here. We were extremely disappointed, especially since we drove so far to see it and paid to get in only to see what we could have seen anywhere within ten miles of where we lived.

To make matters worse, more than half of the area was under construction. Now I understand that sometimes places must get a makeover. Nothing wrong with that. But what I did have a problem with was not knowing this in advance. I never saw anything about construction on their web site. If it’s there, it wasn’t put where people can see it clearly. Something like that should be on the front page and in bold letters, if not on a banner.

So we have a closed cafe’, a wedding, barely any flowers, construction zones all over the place and then, get this, our coupons that were printed from their site said between certain dates (which we were within) that the gardens closed at 8:00 p.m. Nope. They told us they closed at 6:00 p.m. even though the coupons said otherwise.

How about a happy picture before I go on?

Or, maybe a cool one?

Anyway, to top it all off, where was the friggin’ chapel?! They advertise on the site and the brochure a beautiful outdoor wedding chapel called Anthony Chapel, but we did not see it anywhere! Nor did we see the Garvan Pavilion, which would have been a beautiful sight to see. It became apparent to us that maybe they were on the far side of the gardens, but the weird thing was that we saw no signs to point us in the right direction, or really any evidence of either structure being there at all. I mean sure, they have to be there somewhere, obviously, but you would think they would be two key points of interest for most visitors, so the obvious thing to do would be to put up visible signs no matter how far away they were.

I’m sure Garvan Woodland Gardens is a beautiful place to visit when it’s not under construction and there are actual flowers bloomed to see, but I would like to have been given the opportunity to plan my visit for a later date when it was actually ready for visitors, and they should have made sure people knew that important information in advance.

On another note, I’m having my gallbladder removed early in the morning and I’m terrified. :-(