Distribution

My publisher is working on a distribution deal for The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life . This is a good thing. It’s also an oddly distressing thing. To know one’s work will be sent into the cold, harsh world without protection of any kind except for its own inherent value in the marketplace is a bit sobering. As I told my publishing gurus, I believe in the book, but I have no illusions about selling a million copies. Ain’t gonna happen, unless some quirk of fate selects it for laser focus, and that’s like lightning striking three times in the same spot. No illusions. Selling books isn’t why I wrote it anyway, though any author who claims no interest in sales is lying, something writers are particularly good at anyway. But soon the book will be available quite literally worldwide. With that realization a new perspective creeps in: the further away from me the work gets, the more apparent its flaws, real or imagined appear to be. Like looking through a telescope the wrong way, as the book–my book–runs off to faraway places I see things in it I could have written better, phrased better, given more (or less) attention to. In any case, away it goes, like pushing my child out onto the gritty, unforgiving playground, the book must cross the high bars and compete in the sandbox on its own. Parenthood is hard work. Parenting literary offspring may be harder. (Free sample of The Sky behind Me… here. Help yourself.)