The Fear Nobody Tells You About: Publishing Life Through the Eyes of a Wolf
The Fear Nobody Tells You About: Publishing Life Through the Eyes of a Wolf
Finishing a manuscript and publishing it are, emotionally, two very different things.
The work was still "mine" while I was compiling and editing the manuscript. Publishing it meant letting it go. It meant surrendering control over who reads it, what they think about it, and—perhaps most frighteningly—what they might see in me through it.
The Backstory: What Almost Stopped the Book From Happening
When COVID hit and the lockdowns began in 2020, I very clearly remember thinking to myself:
"If the world really is about to end, I should at least try to put my manuscript together."
So I did.
I started by going through the thousands of notes, journal entries, poems, blurbs, and other pieces of writing I had accumulated over the years. From there, I had to decide which ones I actually wanted to publish. Then I whittled those selections down even further until I had what would eventually become the final collection.
The whole process took about a year and a half.
I established my company. I vetted my own work. I figured out how to arrange everything so that these individual pieces could be held together by a loose, common thread. I hired an independent editor—who has since become my friend—and worked on formatting everything into something that finally felt book-worthy.
Then life got in the way.
I lost my job. I struggled to pay my bills. I had physical and mental health issues to contend with, all at once.
It knocked me off my feet.
And it took time before I was in a good position to try again.
Eventually, I found another day job. I found medications that worked for me. Things stabilized, and I felt ready to move forward.
Thankfully, my small indie publisher, Mez Fantasy Publishing, was still accepting manuscripts. I reestablished contact with the owner and got everything ready to submit.
Then, the Fear Didn't End When the Book Was Published
I hesitated before sending all my files to MFP.
It was a scary moment.
I remember reminding myself:
"You've come this far. There's no turning back now. Send it."
So I clicked SEND.
And the rest is history.
But if I'm being completely open about it, there was a brief period afterward when my anxiety took over and I considered asking MFP to pull the listing or stop the process.
For the first time, work that had been deeply personal and largely private was going to be available for anyone to read.
I know, I know.
That defeats the entire point of publishing.
You can't publish something without making it available to the public.
Thankfully, calmer thoughts prevailed. I didn't back out. But the thought crossed my mind, and I think that's worth admitting.
The book was published in December 2024 to no fanfare.
No release party.
No established reader base.
No ARC readers.
No advance ratings or reviews.
Nothing.
That silence scared me because it fed directly into every insecurity I already had.
"What if nobody reads it?"
"What if I don't sell a single copy?"
"What if the only reviews I get are terrible?"
Then came something I certainly hadn't expected:
I accidentally discovered that my own book had been published.
I must have missed the email announcing its release because sometime around February 2025, on a whim, I searched the title on Amazon.
And there it was.
Life Through the Eyes of a Wolf.
My book.
Out in the world.
Of course, publication created an entirely new collection of fears.
What if a typo survived all that editing?
Should I have included a different piece?
Should I have moved this poem somewhere else?
Was that really the best order?
For a long time, I couldn't simply read my own book.
I was still reading it as its writer and editor. I kept examining decisions that had already been made instead of experiencing the finished collection for what it was.
It took about a year after publication—when it was far too late to obsess over changing everything anyway—before I could finally sit down and read my own book as a reader.
And you know what?
It was rather nice.
What Happened After I Let It Go
Once the book existed outside of me, I had to learn about everything else that comes with being a published author.
Marketing.
Networking.
Graphic design.
Copywriting.
Social media management.
Author branding.
And ultimately, figuring out how to build an audience around my writing.
Remember: I started at ground zero.
Outside of immediate friends and family, and maybe some coworkers, I had no established audience for my poetry.
I also took an unusual route. Many writers establish themselves through novels before eventually publishing poetry.
I did the opposite.
My reasoning was simple:
If I only ever publish one book, it has to be my poetry collection.
Then something funny happened.
It took time. It took work. It took learning things I had never expected I'd need to learn.
But readers gradually began connecting with precisely the material I had been afraid to expose.
Positive, honest reviews began arriving organically.
Strangers told me that something I had written resonated with them. Sometimes very strongly.
Think about that for a moment.
Something that once existed privately in my notes because I needed to get it out of my head eventually traveled into the hands of someone I had never met—and that person saw something of themselves in it.
That's quite the reversal.
The vulnerability I had feared became part of the reason people connected with the book.
Advice for the Writer Standing Where I Once Stood
You don't have to stop being afraid before you send the manuscript.
Some fear is normal.
Just don't let it stop you forever.
You don't have to feel completely ready. You don't have to know exactly how you're going to handle everything that comes afterward. You don't need to have marketing, social media, networking, branding, and every other part of authorship completely figured out before you begin.
I'm still figuring some of those things out myself.
You just have to keep learning, improving, and moving forward.
But there is one thing you do need to be ready for:
You have to be willing to let the work exist somewhere beyond yourself.
Because eventually, someone else has to read it.
And that can be terrifying.
It can also be the entire reason you wrote it in the first place.
Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's publishing anyway.
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Life Through the Eyes of a Wolf is available on Amazon in paperback, ebook, and Kindle Unlimited. 🐺📚
— A.T. Pike
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