It’s too easy to lose track of what you’re actually doing amid the flurry of getting a book out the door.
You get so focused on cranking the wheel and working through the punch lists—the final tweaks to the electronic files, the mad dash through ARC applications, finalizing last minute details—you forget what the work is leading to.
As the days melted into August, the substance of the last couple of weeks had kind of slipped past me. I’d been working on. . .
[newsletter readers pick up here]. . . getting advance readers lined up with their copies of The Holdfast.
And then suddenly I press Send and the flurry is replaced with a moment of quiet.
Then a first reader comments. Only at that point do you realize what you’ve just done.
This last push wasn’t just another stepping stone. It was a portal to another dimension.
I’d put the book into actual contact with readers. It is suddenly in their hands and they're reading it. Some may already have finished it. It’s possible one or two have posted reviews.
Your latest piece of creative writing has shipped.
And it’s irretrievably gone.
No longer yours. Now it belongs to the readers.
Whatever the book is, or isn’t, or could be but just wasn’t, the next phase of its journey has begun. You are no longer in control. You can try to steer things a bit by putting it in front of more readers, or different readers, but fundamentally it’s out of your hands.
A slap in the face, and a heck of a way to start August.
The response so far has been positive, for which I’m enormously grateful. But that doesn’t change the strange new reality: The Holdfast has crossed over. People are reading it, forming opinions about it, deciding what it means to them.
Nothing left for me to do but march onward toward Labor Day and its official launch.
And since you’re the readers on the other side of the portal, lemme know what you think—I read every comment.
If you are interested in ordering The Washashore you can find it at—or order it from— these local bookstores. Or pre-order The Holdfast here.
Or if you want the convenience and speed of online, but still want to support local bookstores, grab The Washashorethrough Bookshop.org
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