Why My Books are Not My Babies

From time to time, you come across authors talking about how their books are their babies.  I've been thinking about the release of The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], and decided to see how well the analogy holds up.

Part 1: Creation.  It took me one year to finish the manuscript that would become The Mermaid's Madness, and that's without my editor's revision requests.  It took me mumble minutes to finish … er … well, to finish my part in the creation of what would become my c...