Today is not the first day I have talked about my book...

But it is the first day I am writing a blog about it.

This is maybe not the best time to be writing about my author journey. And yet, here I am.

This week has been a week of hell. Hot oil was spilled on my son while he was at camp, and between hospital appointments, pain management, and dealing with all the big feelings involved, I am completely burnt out.

But the book must go on.

With less than two months before my debut novel, The Threadless Path, releases, I need to stay on top of all the tasks that still need to be completed.

So what have I done this week?

This week was not unproductive. It was just... a lot.

This week I made a post on Threads that unintentionally went low-key viral. Yes, it was only 6k views, but that is significantly more than my usual sub-1k reach. And because of that, I ended up spending a lot of time trying to stay engaged and present in the conversation that followed.

What was the discussion about?

Well, I had recently done my cover reveal, and with minimal interaction across platforms, I started feeling a little defeated. I began wondering if I had completely missed the mark with my cover design. A design I had spent weeks creating.

Anyway, I caved and asked GenAI what it thought I should do for a cover. I showed it my existing cover, the back blurb, and some of my photography-inspired imagery.

Honestly, I expected disaster. Yellow hues. Missing limbs. The usual AI chaos.

Instead... it made something usable.

And, if I am being honest, that hit me harder than I expected. So, in a moment of dry humour and exhausted impulse posting, I shared my cover beside the AI-generated version and vented a little about how frustrated I was.

People had things to say.

Oh boy, did they have things to say.

But the real takeaway from all of it was this: my cover was not abysmal, nor was it wildly off-market for the genre. The reality is simply that my reveal was not particularly high-conflict, and social media algorithms are what they are.

Anyway... I learned a lot, to say the least.