Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

“You’ve just finished your novel! What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to Disneyland!”

This, unfortunately, is not the case for me. I’ve been rather blue since writing “Fin” on the last page. A lot of the messages that came my way in the past couple of days congratulated me on the “birth” of my latest novel, so it’s rather fitting that, when I look up the symptoms listed for postpartum depression, I find that I am experiencing a lot of them.

Why isn’t this a happy time? Why am I not ecstatic over having completed a major opus?

There are lots of reasons, many having to do with the sense of loss that comes from any major separation, but there are other factors that I know are weighing on me.

• Starting a new novel is always a daunting prospect, and I’m facing that whenever I think about my next novel.
• My writing “career” is in transition, so all the business side decisions are anything but straightforward.
  • I want to move from genre fiction to more mainstream storylines, so any agent I find today may not want me tomorrow.
  • This book just completed is Book V in a five-book series, but the original publisher dropped me after Book IV, so finding a publisher for a lonely fifth-of-five is going to be tough.
• And the fact that I’ve been ill and not sleeping hasn’t helped, either.

Maybe it’ll rain today. I’m always happier when it rains.

k