SECOND SIGHT Now Available for Preorder! + Anticipation + Next Kidlit Drink Night

Oh my blog, how I've missed you! But in the weeks since I last posted, I finished editing or reviewed the copyediting on two and a half novels; went to D.C. and came back again; worked at the aforementioned Park Slope United Methodist Book Sale (which was tremendously successful; thanks very much to any of you who checked it out); read a bunch of manuscripts and completed other work tasks; recorded a podcast; scheduled the next Kidlit Drink Night*; finished four Q&As for various blogs and other media related to Second Sight, including a brief stint as Guest Editor at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood here; updated my website with lots of other Second Sight-related stuff . . .

And now you can preorder my book!** Hooray!

The book should finish printing tomorrow and be in its various warehouses, and my very own hands, by the end of the week. Thanks to my job as an editor, I've experienced that magic moment where you hold a book you're proud of for the first time -- one you thought about and labored over and spent hours, days, months bringing to fruition -- many, many times (far more than most authors, in fact, though certainly not with the same depth of emotion). And I've experienced the euphoria and terror that comes with it, too. . . . When we get an advance copy for manufacturing approval in, it's not uncommon for me to dart all over the office saying "See? SEE? Doesn't this look beautiful?" and displaying it to all and sundry, at the same time feeling a little terrified that this is it, it's real, it can't be changed anymore, now other people are going to read and judge it, will they like it, did I do the best I could by the author, what if there's a typo, etc., etc.**

Right now, I imagine getting my own book is going to turn both the joy and the anxiety up to 12 on the dial -- never mind 11. Judging from my behavior at seeing just the proofs, I am probably going to be squeeing AND jittering with nerves well into next week. Thank you for forbearing with me in the meantime. And if you buy the book: Thank you very much for that too!

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* Kidlit Drink Night: March 21, 6:30 p.m., at the Village Pourhouse at 366 West 46th St., between 8th and 9th Avenues. We have an honest-to-Ursula open bar from 6:30-7:30, with free house wine, Bud Light, and well cocktails, so come early and enjoy. Our thanks to LaFabuliste for getting us the open-bar connection here.
** If you have any problems ordering it through Mybookorders.com, do, please, really, let me know. They're a lovely company, but a small one, and so their servers occasionally hiccup on an order or with certain web browsers (particularly Internet Explorer 8). Bug reports let me know how they're doing and pass that information on for their use, so I appreciate it.
*** The most extreme time this happened was the first time I saw a bound and jacketed copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where the combination of the intensity with which we worked on the book, the secrecy in which it had been shrouded, the expectations placed on it, all the personal emotion I'd invested in it, and the awesomeness and physical beauty of the book itself made me first shriek (softly; this was still secret) and then hyperventilate for about two minutes before I could actually examine it properly.****
**** A proper editorial advance-copy examination consists of: Open book, smell it, relish "new book smell"; close it and make sure the text block is squared off; see that the jacket is wrapping correctly around the case cover, and the case cover is properly centered on the book block; make sure the foil is printing distinctly on the spine or case cover; examine the jacket closely to be sure it's cut right and all of its effects are printing correctly; go through the text page by page to ensure all the pages have also been cut correctly and every one is in the right place and printed with the right density; close it again with (hopefully) sigh of relief.