I got my galleys for the middle grade book I wrote last year! It was exciting and very sweet to be able to hold the book in my hands, but the most memorable thing about it was my daughter’s shock that I had written a book.

“I always see you writing and now you have an actual book!” she said. The shade! And the more she tried to explain what she meant, the more dubious she sounded. Like I sit around this house scribbling for my own reasons. My friend called it “casual shade.” That’s exactly what it was! But to be fair to her, this was the first book she was old enough to appreciate. The other two happened when she was too young to be impressed with my name on the cover of a book.

Now she saw what it takes. She made sure I ate and encouraged me to go to bed. She walked through the challenges and the pushes with me. She witnessed it being developed and now she can see it transformed into an object we can hold in our hands. So I guess she has a bit more awe and excitement about it this time around. It only took me three books to impress her!

As you can see from the black strip across the bottom, these are not the final books—these are the galleys. My friend asked me what they were for and it reminded me that we have a long way to go before its release in November. The galleys are the buzz builders. They exist to spread the word and to get reviews of the book. And suddenly it hit me. We’re still waiting on reviews!

I’ve done some cool publicity stuff, which I shared in a previous post and there is more lined up, but this is just the quite little pause before the real push leading up to launch week.

I guess I better keep my energy up. Just like novel writing, novel launching is a long haul!

Onward.

K.