a moment in the life of my book: zing

The morning news is nothing but bad as I listen to the radio at the start of my day. But then there's a ding in the inside pocket of my hoodie. I pull out my phone. It's Liz Prato, Forest Avenue Press's editor in chief. She's texted both me and Forest Ave. publisher Laura Stanfill together. It's just the word yay with a line of exclamation points and a screenshot of my book up on Edelweiss.  

Gives me a little warmth inside. Edelweiss is the website where booksellers go to discover and order books for bookstores. Liz has found the product listing for Who Killed One the Gun? and has been so sweet to text me and Laura to say so. 

I put a heart react on her screenshot and text back, "Eeeeee" with three blue hearts. Blue because the book cover is mostly blue. 

This strange era, where you can communicate with people through color-coded digital hearts.

I put my phone back in my pocket and continue working at my computer, but in a moment there's a zzzing in my pocket, not a ding but a zzzing. Ding means a text and zzzing means a react, and I pull the phone out again. The zzzing was Liz putting a heart react on my three blue hearts. Hearts on top of hearts.

Then she texts, "It gets realer all the time."

And my goodness, it does. All the tiny, tiny moments in the life of this book that isn't even born yet. I text back with a word that's not just real but more than real: "I know! Surreal. Does it ever get less surreal / exciting / scary / exciting (with more than one book, I mean)?"

Because Liz is a veteran in the book game, with a short story collection, an anthology she curated, and two collections of essays, not to mention a novel coming out next year through our beloved Forest Avenue Press.

"I don't think so," she tells me, with a laughy emoji. She says that there are certain things you get more comfortable with, but every book is a different experience. She says she hopes she never gets to the place where she thinks, "Yeah, I've got another book coming out, that's just what my job is."

I hope that for her too. And if there's a book for me beyond this one, I hope it for me too. Even with the scary part. Because the scary part holds hands with the lovely part. I need to remember that. As I worry over bad reviews or no reviews or, OK, just bad reviews, because no reviews mean no bad reviews, and there I go obsessing over the scary part again. 

I put a heart on Liz's text and put my phone back in my pocket. I'm loving the dings and the zzzings but I have to get back to work. Even so, I sit for just a moment with the sweetness I feel that she reached out to me about my book.

And, zzzing!, there goes another one. Maybe Laura catching up with our conversation. I leave my phone for the moment and continue with my typing. The morning news is nothing but bad, but I have a heart in my pocket.