How Does It Feel?

My new book is out. I’ve gone public. With apologies to Charles Dickens, it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

It is too late to check for a misplaced comma or ponder whether a different word fits better than the one I used. Maybe the blurb should be shorter. Or longer. Or different. Would a darker shade of blue have more eye appeal on the cover? Why ask? It’s too late.

I have revealed my innermost being by pouring myself into the written word, and now it is out of my hands. Some say publishing a book is similar to giving birth or watching your firstborn pack up her things and drive away to college, or marriage, or a big city job. There’s joy in the event, but an underlying awareness that nothing is ever going to be exactly the same again.

I sit at my computer, awaiting the verdict of the jury. That’s you, dear reader. Will you treat my little opus with kindness? Immerse yourself in the story I lovingly wrote? Write a review and sprinkle a few stars over your words? I hope so.

Whatever happens, I can forever add that magic post script to my name. How can one little word be so consoling? How can that title send me back to a solitary office to saw out another chunk of my psyche and offer it up to the inspection of every passer-by? I do not know the answer. I only know how much it means to sign off in this fashion.

Carlene Havel, Author
http://goo.gl/s6EQS