It Came in a Brown Box

The first test copies of Vanishing Mia arrived this week.

Here's what I wasn't prepared for: the weight.

Ninety thousand words sounds like a number. Six-by-nine sounds like a format. Neither of those tells you what it feels like when the thing is actually in your hand — heavier than I expected, and somehow heavier than ninety thousand words should be.

People sometimes tell writers that their book is their baby. I've never thought of my writing that way. I gave birth to children, and my children are people who've made themselves — heroes of their own stories. Creative work is something else. It's something I work hard to make. I don't need to protect it from the world the way I did the babies. I need the critique, criticism, input and corrections in order to make it the best it can be.

But sitting at the kitchen table with this book, I'll admit something: there is a moment of recognition that surprised me. Not because the book is like a child. Because there's a difference between knowing something is coming and holding it in your hands. Pregnancy taught me that once. The brown box reminded me.

It took a long time. There were pain points I didn't see coming and some I thought might never end. There were stretches where I genuinely wasn't sure it would arrive. And then it did — a real book, with weight, with edges. And a few final tweaks that need to be made. That’s why we ordered them.

We're past test prints in a couple of weeks. Once we are, I'll have a small number of early author copies — not the final retail edition; and these have a gray band around the cover that says not for sale. Because they’re not.

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