After The Launch…

Don’t be chagrined that your novel, 

Which yesterday seemed done at last

Is revealed in the light of morning

To be only your latest draft.

Carl Dennis

I launched my novel, “How to Make a Life,” virtually. Several hundred people showed up on Zoom. I sat in my study at home, talking to my computer. My interviewer and dear friend, Nora Stonehill sat in her basement a few miles away, talking to her computer, and my niece, Justine, a fantastic actor and voice over coach, sat 3,000 miles away in California, reading excerpts of the book to her computer. And we all felt we were in the same room. It was a great evening.

While we were “on the air” we were getting chat remarks, emails, texts from the people who were watching. Questions came in via Q&A. We had participants from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, Washington State, Ohio, Toronto, Mexico, Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Alaska…you get the picture. I felt celebrated and heard. I felt as if the book was talking.

We had a virtual party afterward and drank champagne, each in our own houses. An easy celebration to have. No cleanup. I was still floating on the inflated air of the congratulatory notes from people who messaged, texted and emailed me.

Serendipitously, just before the launch began, I received notice that my anticipated Kirkus review, was completed. It was in an email which was waiting for me to open. I did not look at it until after the program finished, after the champagne had been drunk and after the celebration was over. I had heard so many stories from fellow authors of terrible Kirkus reviews that it was a relief to read mine. It was a good review with a printable quote which I thought I could put on the front cover of the second printing—if there ever was a second printing. But I was already starting to doubt there would be.

I awoke the next morning with feelings of dread and anxiety. Changes I should have made, characters that called for growth, events I should have added crowded my head. Would some people think I wrote about them? Would they resent it? But it was too late. The book was printed and out in the world. I was terrified. Only friends and family will buy it, I thought, and not everyone will love it. All the old self-doubts, the worries that it would not be important to anyone else, popped into my head at unexpected times. Like the Carl Dennis poem quoted above, I thought I had launched a draft.

But then an odd thing happened. I had just finished my morning coffee and I was spooling through my emails, and I saw one from my publisher.

“Amazon ordered 650 books Monday. Are you doing some sort of special promotion?” she asked.

“Nothing special,” I said. “Just what everyone else is doing…Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads.”

The publisher was perplexed. The warehouse was almost out of books. Amazon bought almost all the inventory. She had no idea why. Did I have a fairy godmother who placed a huge order with Amazon? Was it a special algorithm they use—so many pre-orders mean so many books sold over the next months? I was stunned. Confused. Upset. Excited. The Indie bookstores could not get their books. Amazon had them all.

We did of course order the second printing, which will take three to five weeks. I don’t know what it means. We ordered the same number of books we had ordered the first time. It felt like a huge gamble, but nothing ventured…

One piece of good news is I could put the pithy Kirkus quote above the title. “An engaging and heartfelt portrayal of intergenerational trauma and hope.”

Which I did. And this is how the new cover will look! We are still waiting, however, for it to be printed.

Same beautiful cover, now with a Kirkus quote.