Received my first author’s copies of Bitter Seeds yesterday.
It’s a real, live book. With a cover and pages and everything.
More are on their way to my house, but last night I got to hold my book in my hands for the very first time. Not just the first time for this book, but the first time for me. I suppose that very successful writers with very long careers might eventually get jaded about this sort of thing. But I can’t imagine that.
It was just a little big mind-blowing to see the final product all together in one package — one book — even though I’d seen all of the individual pieces several times. I mean, even after (1) writing the damn thing, and (2) rewriting the damn thing, and (3) copyedits, and (4) galleys, and (5) ARCs, and (6) drooling over the jaw-dropping cover art, there came a moment when I held the final product in my hands and realized, hey, wow, all of that stuff goes together to make a book.
And a damn fine looking book, if I do say so myself. Of course, that’s thanks to the hard work of Tor and John Jude Palencar. Whether the words inside the book live up to the appearance, I can’t say.
And, as a reminder, I’m holding a contest to celebrate the coming-in-less-than-3-weeks release of Bitter Seeds. The prize is a signed ARC of the book! Details about Chronicle of Sorrows can be found here.
Congratulations Ian! I got my eagerly awaited email from Amazon this week: “Greetings from Amazon.com. We thought you’d like to know that we shipped your items, and that this completes your order…” Sometimes US mail arrives here in two days, sometimes in two months, but I’ll be checking! Congratulations again!!