Muriel Spark Reading Week... is coming!

It's really soon, folks!  Indeed, it starts tomorrow.

Both Harriet and I will be putting up introductory posts tomorrow, explaining how the week will work on our blogs - but for you lovely people, all you have to do is read a bit of Muriel this week, blog about it, and let one or other (or both) of us know.  Fun!

See you tomorrow...

Zella Sees Herself - E.M. Delafield

This is one of those posts where I'm going to tell you about a book which is impossible to find... so, should this make you desperate to read it, head to your local academic library!  The book in question is Zella Sees Herself (1917) by E.M. Delafield, her first novel (written when she was my age, actually), kindly lent to me by EMD-enthusiast Marie.  Since it can't be bought for love nor money, I'll keep my post pretty brief...  Oh, and this is the first 1910s book I've read for A Century of Books.

Zella Sees Herself follows Zella de Kervoyou from childhood to early adulthood.  It is what would now be called a coming-of-age novel, yet she comes of age so gradually, and through such shifting stages of maturity, that the term probably doesn't quite fit.  Her first cause for change comes in the first pages, as her mother dies and she is shipped off to live with relatives.  Indeed, she relocates a few times - my favourite of the various relatives she encounters is Aunt Marianne, one of those incredibly un-self-aware women who prefix tired truisms with "As I always say ---" and imagines that everybody has said precisely what she wishes them to say, so she can disregard what they actually think.  (When I say favourite I do, of course, mean favourite to read - not favourite to love.)

We follow Zella through her time at a convent, where she eventually decides to become a nun - and her speedy renunciation of this desire upon leaving the convent.  There is a quick dalliance with society, and finally the need to decide whether or not to accept the first man who proposes to her, unsure of her own feelings.

I've whipped through the plot because it is all fairly standard stuff, both for the period and for Delafield herself.  Apparently it was partly autobiographical.  First novels are always fascinating to read, especially when the first was not the best.  Some authors (Edith Olivier, David Garnett) never live up to their first effort; others go on to much greater feats.  Delafield is in the latter camp, which makes it all the more interesting to spot areas in which she would later develop.  There are plenty of hallmarks of Delafield's later novels - both in theme and style.  Covents crop up a lot in her work, as does the uncertain hunt for a husband.  Aunt Marianne even quotes the title to one of Delafield's later novels:

Aunt Marianne vanished, but reappeared next moment at the door in order to add, in a slightly Scriptural tone which she would not have employed had she been aware that she was quoting no more sacred authority than the poet Shakespeare:

"Remember, Zella, that one is expressly told to go down upon one's knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man's love."

Ten points if you spotted it, and another ten if you can name the Shakespeare play from which it derives.

More importantly than these sorts of things, there are elements of Delafield's style which are beginning to bud.  You can already see plenty of signs of her dryness, irony, and the pleasure she gets in sending up those who have no self-awareness.  As the title wryly suggests, Zella cannot, in fact, see herself.  It's a theme which is repeated throughout Delafield's work, used both comically and tragically.  In Zella Sees Herself there is both.  Aunt Marianne is one amongst many who is self-deluded.  Another is Alison St. Craye, a few years older than Zella and a would-be intellectual.  In her case, Delafield uses self-delusion for comedy.  Here's an example I noted more or less at random:

The debate proved tedious.

A nervous-looking girl in black was voted into the chair, and made a preliminary speech which began and ended with a stammering sentence to the effect that everyone must agree, whatever their individual view of the matter, that the subject of Reincarnation was a very interesting one.

"Hear! hear!"

Alison's speech was a lengthy one.  Her delivery was slow and over-emphatic; she spoke kindly of Christianity and its doctrines.

Most of the speakers had some personal example, that bore more or less upon the subject, to relate.  One or two adduced strange phenomena experienced by themselves, and a young married woman recounted at some length vivid recollections of ancient Carthage that obsessed her.

Alison shook her head slowly from side to side, with contemptuous disapproval, or nodded it slowly up and down with contemptuous approval.  Lady St. Craye looked interested, and gently clapped each speaker.

Zella thought that she could have made a far more striking and original speech than any of them, but knew herself well enough to be aware that, if she were suddenly called upon to speak, her self-confidence would leave her, and leave her helpless.

For Zella, a lack of self-awareness - and, still more, the pain of dawning self-awareness - is more tragic than comic.  Delafield herself was still young (twenty-six - as I said, my age) and had yet entirely to shake off the earnestness of the youthful author.  Perhaps she never entirely lost it, nor is there any real reason why she should, but I prefer her in poking-fun mode than in exclamatory mode.

For a first novel, this is exceptionally good.  I don't believe E.M. Delafield was capable of writing a bad novel.  In comparison to later efforts, it clearly falls a bit short - but is incredibly interesting in terms of putting another piece in the jigsaw of EMD's writing career, and I'm delighted that Marie gave me the chance to read it.


One other person got Stuck into this Book!

"Some of the characters verge on caricature; there is much more subtlely in Delafield's later characterisation, which relies less on extreme contrast between characters" - Tanya, 20th Century Vox

Why Debut Authors Need Hogwarts: The Top 5 Publishing Secrets No One Tells You

by Amy Franklin-Willis

When the unknown writer crosses into the promised land of publication, she feels victory. Validation. Joy. Astonishment. Revenge. Lucky. Grateful. Psyched.  Exhausted.  All at the same time.  And so the publishing roller coaster begins.

In March 2010 my novel The Lost Saints of Tennessee sold to Grove/Atlantic. Two months ago it was published.  Throughout I have found myself wishing there was a writing conference or a retreat or, perhaps most of all, a school to attend that could prepare me for the most challenging and thrilling stage of my writing life.  

A school where your publishing contract gains you admission and the campus is located in a castle outside of Manhatttan, maybe in Poughkeepsie or Fishkill.  The school uniform consists of skinny jeans and rumpled turtlenecks.  With compulsory crest-emblazoned berets. And everybody smokes but no one gets cancer.

This Hogwarts of Debut Authors features a faculty of esteemed, successful authors of all stripes, genres and sales records.  My dream team would be, in no particular order, J K Rowling, Zadie Smith, John Grisham, Nora Roberts (or NFR as her friends call her), Carl Hiaasen, Ann Patchett, Marilynne Robinson, John Gardner (who is deceased but we’re dreaming here), Chris Bohjalian, Lauren Myracle, Mary Oliver, Michael Chabon, Dorothy Allison, Harper Lee and Toni Morrison.  Can’t you just see them all lined up at the head table for the opening dinner? 

And we learn to play Quidditch.  Just because. 

But since the school is still in the early concept stage, I’d like to share my top five publishing secrets no one tells debut authors.  And we’ll go in reverse order because it works for David Letterman.

·     

    SECRET #5.  The legend of the “Publication Date.”   

      As your book makes its way through the editing stages, your publisher sets a date for its official publication. You mark it on the calendar. You shout it on Facebook.  You tweet it. You post a photo of the mark on the calendar. 

Don’t.  It’s a big old lie.  Your book is no more likely to show up in one synchronized wave of instant placement in bookstores on its publication day than a woman is likely to give birth on her “due date.”   How many babies are born on their due date?  Less than five percent. 

Here’s what you can expect.  Your reviews, if you are lucky enough to get them, will be timed to come out either right before or right after your pub. date—this helps the magazines and newspapers organize their review workload and gives you a healthy promotional rocket booster launch out of the gate. 

Three weeks before your “pub. date” your great aunt Beth in Cedar Rapids will leave you a message saying, “Amy, I just saw your book in the store down the street!  Isn’t that great?  But didn’t you tell me it wasn’t coming out until next month?” 

You panic. The giant levers of publishing are off kilter.  Your book is premature.  PREMATURE.  Premature anything is bad, right?   

Worry not.  Your book is simply making its way towards “full distribution.”  Friends in New York will rejoice because they got the book “early” and friends in New Orleans will complain about the friends in New York because it’s not in their bookstore yet so they had to go listen to music and get drunk instead on Bourbon Street.  The official moment when all of your books are supposed to find their way to their temporary bookstore homes is your pub. date. 

This subject is confusing because we hear about the Harry Potter and Hunger Games midnight book release parties where thousands of readers line up outside their favorite bookstores.  Most authors think that someday, people will be doing this for our books too and when they do, the publisher will then “embargo” our latest book when it ships to the stores with tiny little bombs implanted in the cartons of books set to go off if the bookstore breaks the seal before the official pub. date. 

Until then, dear debut author, we must make do with a sprinkling approach to our books arriving in stores. 

·     SECRET #4:  There is not a “best” time to publish a new author.    

      There are better times.  Unless one is getting a huge push from his publishing house, avoiding the fall publishing season as a debut author seems favorable. Fall is when all the big author books get pushed out in advance of the December holiday season.

So let’s say you and your publisher determine Winter or Summer is the perfect season. You pray that your publication month will be a “quiet” one where your debut book shines like the North Star to potential readers.  No.  Scratch that.  Your first book will function as a solar eclipse amongst the other books foolish enough to schedule publication during your month.

And, inevitably, no fewer than three best-selling authors will have their new books out the same month as yours. Those selfish one percenter author bastards will suck all the air out of the publicity you know was destined for your masterpiece.  You know this as surely as the Flat Earth Society knows the idea of the Earth being round is political propaganda.

·     SECRET #3:  Social Media Will Consume Your Life.    

      At a minimum, your publisher will expect you to:  develop a Facebook presence, either on your own personal page or, more frequently, on an author fan page; tweet snappy, interesting things via Twitter that talk about other things besides your book but occasionally mention your book; have an engaging, easy to navigate website. 

This obligation surprised me the most. I work a full-time job, am raising three kids, and attempting to be a novelist. I now spend more time on Facebook than my teenager.  You will too. 

The social media piece is a HUGE time commitment. Your family will make snarky comments like, "Oh, look, Mom's going to tweet about how sorry she is for running over that poor squirrel because she thinks people will 'favorite' it." They will try to wrest your i-Phone from your hands just as you are uploading to Facebook the cutest picture of your book at the local bookstore.

But the modern reader loves to connect with her authors. She wants to tell you via Facebook or Twitter that she is on page 176 and loving it. And you better be there to thank her for buying your book.

On the web page front, I initially budgeted $1500. My web designer fell through and I ran out of money so I ended up doing it myself through a company called Squarespace. They charge $22/month to host a site and though I pulled several all-nighters to set it up initially, it ended up being the most effective and economical approach. I love my site and can easily add new event dates, reviews, videos and pictures.

·    Secret #2:  The Great Mystery of Sales Data.   

      For five years I worked for UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business as a fundraiser.  I met lots of Silicon Valley CEOs and learned something about business via osmosis during my tenure.  One of the basic expectations of business is tracking sales.  That information is then shared down the food chain from the executives to the sales force to the product developers. 

Not so in my limited publishing experience. Fuzzy ideas about your sales numbers exist at places like "Author Central" on Amazon's web site where you can tap in to Bookscan data (Bookscan is the industry's primary sales tracking method for print books but it contains only 40%-80% of actual sales--yes, you read that right, there's a 40% spread on the accuracy) and get your Kindle e-book rank but not the actual number of e-books sold.

Sales information seems to be guarded by publishers as if the release of the bare figures to you, the author, might be tantamount to giving Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blueprints to our nuclear facilities.  

The one place I've found thus far where I can get hard numbers easily is from my independent booksellers. They happily tell me how sales are going in their stores.

·      And the #1 SECRET is:  Having Your First Book Published Will Be More And Less Than You Ever Dreamed.  

      Here is the bad news. You will not be able to retire on the first royalty check you receive, providing you are in the fortunate group who earns back their advance and makes it into royalty territory.  Odds are against your book making it to the New York Times Bestseller list, though there are always a few debut books each year that do.   

      Most people you meet will never have heard of you or your book. And at least one person, probably more, will write a review either in print or on the web that says your book is “predictable” and that she likes the dog in your book better than the main character. 
  

      But there will be moments, I promise, when the miracle of publication causes your breath to catch. Someone throws you a book party, invites your closest friends and family, you buy a new outfit and feel, for a few hours, as if you are a literary princess or prince and the only person on the planet to have accomplished publication. 

      The first time you see your book in an actual bookstore. Facing out. On the front table. 

      A reader sends you a message that tells you your book--those words you wrote in the dark night while your children slept nearby--caused him to think differently about his relationship with his own family. 

      At a bookstore event, a stranger approaches you shyly with your book in her hands and says that it was wonderful. This same person will ask  your daughters--to whom the book is dedicated--to sign their names on the dedication page. 

      A reviewer will quote one of your favorite lines from the book as evidence of your writing talent and you will feel as if someone is listening. 

      As if your words have gone from that secret place where we conjure them, to the page, to the world.        

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

On Tuesday night I went, with my housemate Mel and fellow book-blogger Naomi (aka Bloomsbury Bell - go check out her new Wordpress style!) to hear Jen Campbell talk about Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops.  Quite a few of you will know Jen from her blog, and those of you who use Twitter more than I do might well know her as @aeroplanegirl.  One day I'll fully understand Twitter, and then there'll be no stopping me.

Jen had also been a writer in residence at Blackwell's, writing a poem related to each of Blackwell's five floors, and she recited these at the event - I'd love to read them again, so hopefully they'll make an appearance somewhere.

But the main event was the book - having worked in a secondhand bookshop, and the Bodleian, I am familiar with some of the stranger comments and requests made by the Great British Public (calling from New York at 3am to tell the head of Rare Books your spurious theories on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays?  Sure, go ahead!) but I wouldn't have believed she could fill a book, almost entirely from her own experience.  The back section includes other people's contributions, but this is mostly Jen's collection.  It's hilarious.  I'd read all the entries on her blog, but there are plenty more gems.  Here are some from the blog, also in the book, as a taster:

Customer: Excuse me, do you have any signed copies of Shakespeare plays?
Me: Er... do you mean signed by the people who performed the play?
Customer: No, I mean signed by William Shakespeare.
Me: .....*headdesk* 

Customer: Hi, I'd like to return this book, please. 

Me: Do you have the receipt?
Customer: Here. 
Me: Erm, you bought this book at Waterstone's. 
Customer: Yes. 
Me:.... we're not Waterstone's. 
Customer: But, you're a bookshop. 
Me: Yes, but we're not Waterstone's. 
Customer: You're all part of the same chain. 
Me: No, sorry, we're an independent bookshop. 
Customer: ....
Me: Put it this way, you wouldn't buy clothes in H&M and take them back to Zara, would you?
Customer: Well, no, because they're different shops. 
Me: Exactly. 
Customer:... I'd like to speak to your manager. 

--

Customer: I read a book in the eighties. I don't remember the author, or the title. But it was green, and it made me laugh. Do you know which one I mean?

If this appeals, you should definitely get hold of a copy.  And once you've laughed your way through that, I suggest that you check out Bookworm Droppings by Shaun Tyas, from 1988, which is a less attractive title (and rather less well produced) but equally amusing - and essentially the same concept.  Also, I've copied this entry across from my brother's blog - I worked occasionally in a secondhand bookshop during my sixth form, and when I couldn't be there, Colin covered my shifts - and thus was left with this woman... (Hope this is ok, Col... yeah?)

August 31st 2004
Here I am, working at the book shop again... much better than last time, since I've got about three and a half hours left and I've already made £36.25, more than covering my £20 wages. But the last customer I had was rather strange (before you get confused, I'm writing this on my laptop, which I brought into work). I don't want to hurt her feelings, but it's unlikely that she's heard of the internet. [...] Anyways, she came in and asked me if Ian (my boss) was here. I said he wasn't. She said 'What?' and I repeated what I said - this was more or less the pattern whenever I said anything, actually - so she asked me what our phone number was. I didn't know, so I phoned up Dad, and he knew, so I wrote it down on a PostIt. She asked me if the fives were fives, I said (and repeated) that they were. Then she decided she didn't want the phone number on a PostIt, because it was sticky, so I tore part of another PostIt (ie not the sticky part) and wrote it again. This time she said it was too small, but accepted it anyway. After this she left the shop and, I rather hoped, my life, having told me twice that she would like to see Ian's daughter and dog. A few minutes later she came back in and asked me how much the books outside were, so I came outside and told her about four times that they were individually priced, interrupted while she told me the man nearby had just stolen a book. I mumbled something along the lines that he probably already had the book in his hands before coming to the shop, but she probably didn't hear me because she didn't say 'What?' Satisfied that the books did actually cost what they said they cost, she said she'd be back in if she found any books she wanted to buy. Okay. So I went back in, and soon enough she was back, clutching two books and telling me that she'd read one of them (A Tale of Two Cities) in school, but wasn't sure if she'd read the other (Crime and Punishment). I took the books, told her the price (£1.75), and she asked me 'Are you busy?' I wasn't sure what to say - did she mean the shop? Or me? The shop, I assume - so I told her we were quite busy. She made her usual reply, so I told her we were quite busy. Then began the long process of paying - one pound and seventy-five pence - in which she decided to get rid of as many coppers and small coins as possible. When she'd got to about £1.30, the phone rang, so I answered it, but got no reply, and got no number from 1471. Is it just me, or has prank calling never really reached the level of sophistication that it could have done? There are some artists out there, but silence is about as rubbish as it gets. Anyway, she'd got to about £1.35 when I'd said 'hello' several times and hung up... eventually she got to the full one seventy five, and as I was putting the money away in the money-box, she asked me again if I was busy - me personally. Sensing she wanted me to help with something, perhaps along the lines of lifting boxes, I said I had a bit of time. It turned out she wanted me to hold A Tale of Two Cities while she recited from it. She marked the place in the book, read two words, and then asked to see it again. This time, after reading the first line, she was able to recite the last two pages of the book with only minimal errors (which I didn't point out, judging that to do so would bring more trouble than it'd be worth)... well, congratulations to her. She told me that she'd memorised it when she was a girl, and that she was also able to recite pages from Wuthering Heights. It was about this moment that I silently thanked Ian for not putting Wuthering Heights out for sale. Anyways, I told her that it was very impressive (what?) very impressive, and she asked me if I would listen to my grandmother do the same thing... I told her my grandmother was dead, but that I probably would do if she still lived. This was far too confusing for my customer, who simply ignored it, and told me that her grandchildren soon got bored when she tried to recite from nineteenth century classics. Rather than proclaim my astonishment at the foolishness of youth, or point out to her that, as an employee at the shop, I could hardly tell her to shut up, I mumbled something and she shook my hand. Now she's gone, and hasn't come back in the last thirty minutes or so, so I think I'm safe.

Year Five: The Sketches

As has become an annual tradition, I have compiled the sketches which featured during my fifth year of blogging (which, incidentally, almost coincides with the tax year.)  It always reminds me that I haven't done as many as I planned.  But also slightly more than I remember doing.  Here they are - clicking on the sketch should take you to the relevant post!

 

 

Uncanny Stories - May Sinclair

To those of us in this particular corner of the blogosphere, where reprint publishers of early twentieth-century women's novels are our bread and butter, the name May Sinclair is probably most closely connected with her 1922 novel Life and Death of Harriett Frean (and perhaps for coining the term 'stream of consciousness', in print).  And a very good novel it is too (my thoughts here.)  What gets less attention is that the following year she published a collection called Uncanny Stories.  Indeed, she was astonishingly prolific, publishing fourteen books in the 1920s alone - and, as Uncanny Stories demonstrates, was not afraid to venture into different genres.

Truth be told, there is only really one story which stands out in this collection, and that is the first one: 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched'.  I'd read it a while ago, and hoped that the others in the collection would match up - sadly they didn't really.  The atmosphere, characters, and writing were all good, but they often follow essentially the same premise: a ghost returns to clear up some unfinished business, usually romantic. I suppose that is as good a ghost story prototype as any, and Sinclair is careful always to incorporate some psychological angle, but 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched' is excitingly original by comparison.  (Oh, and there is 'The Finding of the Absolute', which is a posthumous discussion about adultery and Kant... but that was mostly bizarre.)

The term 'uncanny' had only recently (four years earlier) been used as the title to an influential essay by Freud ('Das Unheimliche') and it is likely that Sinclair deliberately chose her title to connect with his, especially given her interest in psycho-analysis.  But the relationship between sexuality and the supernatural is not hidden in 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched'.

The story concerns Harriott who, like her near-namesake Harriett Frean, misses out on an early chance at love.  No further opportunities present themselves until, after her father's death, she embarks upon an affair with a married man, Oscar.  They spend a fortnight together in the Hotel Saint Pierre, Paris, and the affair drags on... and on...

She tried hard to believe that she was miserable because her love was purer and more spiritual than Oscar's; but all the time she knew perfectly well she had cried from pure boreom. She was in love with Oscar, and Oscar bored her.  Oscar was in love with her, and she bored him.  At close quarters, day in and day out, each was revealed to the other as an incredible bore.

At the end of the second week she began to doubt whether she had ever been really in love with him.

When Harriott wonders whether or not she could marry Oscar, she thinks 'Marriage would be the Hotel Saint Pierre all over again, without any possibility of escape.'  Little does she realise the fate that awaits her after her death... Although she lives many years after the end of her affair, even becoming a deaconess, after her death it is Oscar she sees.

The rest of the story is hauntingly surreal, and incredibly filmic.  It would make a superb short animated feature, actually - think Tim Burton meets Salvador Dali.  Harriott keeps escaping Oscar, running through past memories of a church, her village, her childhood home and garden... but every corner she turns, the rooms and streets rearrange themselves into the corridor of the Parisian hotel.  Sinclair writes this so well, vividly and visually.  I thought that Jean de Bosschere's illustration, which accompanies it, gives a good idea of what Sinclair was trying to convey:

Ineluctably Harriott is forced back to the scene of her loveless affair, overriding everything else she has done.

"In the last death we shall be shut up in this room, behind that locked door, together.  We shall life here together, for ever and ever, joined so fast that even God can't put us asunder.  We shall be one flesh and one spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other."

"Why? Why?" she cried.

"Because that's all that's left us.  That's what you made of love."

It is unpopular these days for a work of fiction to have a moral; the much-fated quality of 'openmindedness' has led to people being extremely closed-minded in this area.  It was pretty unpopular for stories to have morals even in the 1920s, but Sinclair has dared to.  The story is not so much a warning against adultery as a cry against sexual relationships where there is no love - as such I think the story is very resonant today, and chilling in ways that Gothicised tales of horror cannot be.  It's a shame that the rest of Uncanny Stories is fairly pedestrian - entertaining and diverting enough, but never experimental.  But I do recommend you track down 'Where Their Fire is not Quenched', in or out of this collection.  In fact, you can read a pdf version here...

What To Do When There's Nothing Left To Do

by Wiley Cash

When I was a kid, I watched the movie Space Camp. At the time, I was really interested in science, and, although I’d never even flown in an airplane, I was thinking it would be pretty cool to be an astronaut. To be honest, I was a pretty impressionable kid; I’d read Pistol Pete Maravich’s biography and started spinning the basketball on the tip of my index finger and wearing floppy tube socks. I’d been so blown away by M.C. Hammer’s album Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em that, in the sixth grade, I plagiarized the lyrics to “Pray” for an essay on “how to make the world a better place.” With skills like that, being an astronaut would be simple.

Space Camp is about a group of kids who go to a camp at the Kennedy Space Center. One day, during a simulated launch, the gang is accidentally shot into outer space. Like anyone would be who isn’t old enough to operate a car, the kids face their share of interstellar challenges. One of those challenges has always stayed with me; at the end of the movie, they begin to run out of oxygen, and they have to hold their breath in order to survive. I’ll never forget that one character tells a story about a friend who can hold his breath forever just by thinking about French fries. This scene scared me to death.

I’ve never been one for cardio; I’ve never been a strong swimmer or a strong runner, and I couldn’t imagine being forced to hold my breath, regardless of what was on my mind to distract me. I was wrong; my first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, sold to William Morrow in December of 2010, and it’s being released tomorrow, a full fourteen months later. I’ve been holding my breath for almost a year and a half. It turns out I do have the lungs to be an astronaut, or I can at least hold my breath long enough to help a young Tate Donovan and an even younger Joaquin Phoenix bring the shuttle home.

Over the past few months, especially the past few weeks, I’ve often felt like I was in a cramped shuttle cabin, growing light-headed and dizzy, blood pumping in my ears. I’ve spent less time thinking about the novel’s actual release and more time thinking about how to prepare for it. I’ve written blog posts, traveled to conventions, sat for interviews, and spent more hours than I care to admit plugged into Facebook and Twitter. For a guy who’s never downloaded a song and has no clue how to use an Ipod, it’s been quite an adjustment. To put it simply: I’m sick of me, and I’m sure other people have gotten pretty sick of me too. But such is the mania of publishing your first novel, or so I’m told by others who have done it.

It makes sense that preparing for it can make you crazy. Shortly after my book sold, one of my best friends and I attended a writing convention in Washington, DC that featured an acres-sized book fair, full of more tables and books and authors than I’d ever seen in my life. It seemed that there were more books than there were people to read them, and I remember asking my friend how I could ever expect my book to find its way into readers’ hands.

We like to think that the job of the writer is to write and that the job of promoting, toting, and devoting others to said writer’s book falls to someone else. For the most part, this is true. I have an absolutely wonderful publicity and marketing team on my side, and everyday I take several moments throughout my day to be conscious of my good fortune, to live in the moment and marvel at the incredible turn my life has taken. But that doesn’t stop me from lying in bed at night, wondering if there is more I can do to get my book out there: more booksellers to meet, more Facebook posts to post, more 140-character comments to tweet.

At least tonight will be my last night having thoughts like these.

My novel will be out tomorrow, and at this moment there is nothing more I can do to make that release any more or any less successful. Already I can feel oxygen coming back into the cabin. We’re going to land safely, and everything is going to go back to normal. And I can finally eat French fries without having to think about holding my breath.