You spend years writing & revising a book. You go through all kinds of anxiety marketing it. You sell it, you work with the publisher on all kinds of aspects. Gradually the idea of it, the abstraction of words, becomes imagined as an object: The embodiment of words.
Yet however many times you go through that process, nothing prepares you for the moment you hold the thing itself. Some superstitious monkey part of your brain thinks, I have thought a thought inside my head and now it is a thing out in the world.
In my case, that thing — the Advance Readers Copy — had been delayed by snow for days, and when UPS rang the doorbell this morning I ran down the stairs like a kid tearing for the Christmas tree. (Which also explains why I look as if I just got up. I don’t know how to explain how I look the rest of the time.)
And as much as Ken and I have worked to make this book real, and as much input and collaboration as we have had with our publisher, Blackstone, to realize this idea, I still think it looks unbelievably better than how I thought it would look. And I thought it was gonna look pretty good!
Fata Morgana is Ken’s first novel — he’s over the moon right now!
And the hardcover pre-order is being discounted at $19.56 at Amazon. Get thee hence, I say!