The day it came out

Yesterday was the official publication date for my new book, The Ask and the Answer. A big, big day, but an oddly quiet one.

I started writing it almost two years ago, taking a year to get it into shape and then another year through the editing and publishing process. There are, as you might imagine, a couple dozen milestones along the way, each of which feels pretty good: Finishing the first draft, finishing the final draft (many months later), getting a cover designed, finding out the number of pages (which, to me, is an item of unseemly curiosity; I'm always dying to know).

And, the best day for me, holding a final hardcover in my hands. This is the day I really feel like an author. Nothing can beat holding a final, published book in your hands, every word of which has been written by you. There it is, an inarguable, concrete fact, with heft and weight and physical presence.

Books to me are more than just things to read anyway; I love books for the feeling of the pages, the design of the cover, the fonts, the board under the sleeve. I love them, have always loved them, have a house full of them (burglars must be so disappointed).

And to have one of my own, well, then. A dream realised, and how often do you get to say that in life?

The Ask and the Answer is my fourth book, and so far the feeling hasn't even come close to wearing off. In fact, if it ever did, that should probably be the day I give up writing, eh?  Publishing a book is such a privilege - and so bloody hard to do - that the instant you start taking it for granted is the day, I think, that you become unreadable. And I can think of an author or two to whom that has happened ...

But so after these long two years of milestones and hard work, the actual day of publication is a funny old thing, because in the largest sense, it happens without you. Sure, I've had launch celebrations of one kind or another, but I'm certainly not in every bookstore as it reaches the shelves. I can't possibly follow the supply trucks and stand behind the store clerks and put it myself into the hands of potential punters. Not without having restraining orders filed.

It is, in many respects, like the first day you send your child to school. You've done everything you can to prepare them, but once you've sent them out the door, they're necessarily on their own, to find their own way in the world. 

There's more to come, of course: sales, reviews (for good or ill), the paperback, foreign editions (which are particularly cool to see) and so on. But the day it reaches bookstores and says hello to the world is, strangely, the day I kind of say goodbye to it. There's not one thing more I can change about it, not one more way I can make it better or readier, and so with pride and hope, I send it on its way.

So, my book is out there in the world, ready to meet you. And I wait with fully parental interest to see what sort of life it makes for itself.