Saturday, July 26, 2008

An Author's Life: Author's Copies (IV)

And then, dear readers, comes the great and glorious day when the sound of the doorbell is followed the thud of a box of books landing on the front stoop. Author's copies! I negotiated for 20. They arrived earlier this week.

Believe it or not, the carton sat unopened in my home office for a few hours. I was busy earning my mortgage payment and their cat food. I also wanted to sacralize the event. No unceremonious slicing through packing tape for me.

I pray many types of prayers during the course of writing a book. The arrival of a newly published one calls for prayers of thanksgiving -- for the gift of being able to write, the blessed support of friends, and the wise counsel of "first readers." With this book I also thanked God and St. Michael the Archangel that the production team didn't hire a thug to stem the riptide of my unrelenting input during the design process.

So I said my prayers and took a few deep breaths while removing packing material. And then, I held a printed copy of The Word Made Fresh. Pretty thrilling. Also a bit scary, but that's an entirely different post.