Publication Day!
As a writer, you spend a lot of time dreaming about the day your book will finally hit the shelves, and you’ll officially become a published author. Almost as much time, perhaps, as actually writing the book. (Or is that just me?)
In any case, as the day nears, you may find yourself imagining one of two distinct scenarios…
The First Scenario
You wake in an enormous bed. Much bigger than your real bed, it takes up practically the entire room, and has an unnecessary, bordering-on-absurd, number of pillows.
You prop yourself up, in a distinctly throne-like manner, so that you can drink your champagne for breakfast while reading a glowing review of your book in The New York Times (even though, last time you checked, your book wasn’t out in the US).
From somewhere outside the room, comes the trilling of a telephone (a landline, for some reason, which has been installed, without your knowing, for this very purpose). It’s Hollywood. They want the movie rights, NOW. In fact, an award-winning, critically-acclaimed producer is already on their way to your house, in a limousine, presumably, or, perhaps, something less obvious, more demure. But in any case, they’re armed with a blank cheque and a storyboard.
No sooner has the receiver (coral pink?) been replaced, than it’s ringing off the hook. Oprah this time! Reese! A prize you didn’t know you’d been entered for! You’ve won!
You sigh, and swing your long, smooth legs - with no varicose veins or mystery bruises - from the bed. Your morning bath is ready. Your fans will have to wait.
The Second Scenario
You wake to the pinging of your phone as it vibrates itself off your bedside table into the dregs of last night’s herbal tea. Bleary-eyed, and with a scratch in your throat that surely belies the beginning of a summer cold, you swipe to unlock the screen, which now smells like passionflower and valerian, which is to say, feet.
A barrage of one-star reviews and hate-tweets flash before your eyes. You didn’t even know people were still using twitter. Wait, is it even called that anymore?
Your phone rings in your hand. It’s your agent / editor / the CEO of your publishing house. No, it’s a video call with all three! The WiFi is unstable, but no matter. You can tell what they’re about to say from their facial expressions alone. They’re dropping you and your stupid book, which has sold precisely zero copies, by the way. (Even though you have at least 500 one-star-reviews????)
Your author career is over, before it’s even begun.
The Reality
Fortunately, the reality of publication day is a rather more subdued affair.
There will, almost certainly, be cake. Something fizzy to drink. Flowers. Lovely messages of congratulations. Someone will post a photograph of your book on social media - they’re reading it in their back garden! How funny to think that something you wrote such a long time ago, in another lifetime, almost, is, at this moment, being read by someone you’ve never even met. Your first Amazon review appears. Three stars. Four, if you’re very lucky. Enjoyable but forgettable. Slow to get going but good when it finally did. Or, perhaps, they loved it, right up to the end, which they hated. (Sorry about that.)
You wait to feel something. Joy! Outrage! Pride! Despair! But you really don’t feel anything much at all, and perhaps that’s for the best. Reviews are for readers, after all.
You check your ranking, even though you know you shouldn’t. 31,974 books are selling better than yours. What are you supposed to do with that information?
You eat some more cake.
You wonder what to wear to your launch party. What do authors wear? Up to now, you have mostly been wearing pyjamas. Or that bobbly, out-of-shape cardigan over your comfiest leggings, all with a light dusting of dog hair, of course. But while that would certainly be authentic, you can’t help but feel it wouldn’t strike the right note.
You should definitely put on a bra. Even though the wires poke you until it’s almost impossible to think about anything else.
You catch a train and wonder if anyone on it will be reading your book. But of course they won’t because it only came out five minutes ago, and it isn’t The Goblet of Fire, for Christ’s sake. You remind yourself that you are not George R.R. Martin, or Donna Tartt. That the only person who has been waiting in breathless anticipation of this day, is you. And, perhaps, your husband, who has watched your inevitable slide into insanity these past weeks and will be pleased to have you back to normal. Or normal-ish, anyway.
You visit three local bookshops, in the hope of finding a copy of your novel on the shelves, and there, at last, in the third and final one, it stands proudly on the shelf alongside so many others. Each one a shiny promise that on any other day you would be contemplating with glee. But not today. Today, your hot grabby hands reach for one only.
It’s so pretty! So real!
New Crime!
You hadn’t especially thought of it as a crime novel, when you were writing it. But there are (several) crimes in it, so that seems fair enough.
And while it isn’t facing out when you find it, it is when you leave, so that’s alright.
The booksellers are all lovely, and insist you sign it and have a photograph, even though you’re sweating profusely, and you’ve forgotten your own signature, which you’ve been diligently practicing for weeks now, in preparation for this very moment. So much so that your desk - strewn with sheets of paper all scrawled with variations of your own name over and over - is starting to give Shining vibes. You’re kind of glad it isn’t winter. And that you don’t have twins.
Still, you figure it out eventually, and after scrawling your name and an excited message inside the shop’s only copy of your novel, the booksellers make such a lovely fuss over you, that you’re reminded of the acute joy and tender embarrassment of having to go up for a certificate in assembly in primary school.
You had pigtails back then, that swung as you walked, each step seeming to take a lifetime, all eyes on you. But even in your hot discomfort, you were pleased to have your efforts recognised. As you are now. And even back then you wanted to be a writer. As you are now.
You’re an author! Your book in your hands! And in other people’s hands! And on shelves, and e-readers, and TBR piles, and in warehouses, waiting to be shipped and resounding through car speakers or headphones as people go about their lives, listening to the audiobook.
And when you celebrate with friends and family later, everyone is so bloody gorgeous about it, and so happy for you, you forget all about the 31,974 other books, and the ambivalent reviews, and Hollywood.
Because what on earth could be better than this?
You did it! The thing you’ve been wanting to do - saying you’re going to do - almost your entire life!
And now, all that remains, is to do it all over again with Book Two…
Wait, what?
*****
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
To every one who has bought, read and reviewed The Honeymoon Suite, and to everyone who has been so bloody lovely and helped me celebrate its release. I’m so enormously grateful to each and every one of you.
RTM
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