It’s here! It’s here! The Book of Blood and Shadow is HERE! (And as Jesse Spano would say, I’m so excited! I’m so excited! I’m so…SCARED.)
I’ve fled north to spend the release day in Amherst, figuring that every time I’ve spent a book launch day in New York, it’s ended in tears. (Usually mine, though I do kick really hard when necessary.)
Amherst seemed like the right place, since this is where I spent a week, almost exactly two years ago, waiting to see if someone was going to buy my book. My agent had sent it around to a million editors and, after a couple weeks of waiting for answers, I started going insane. So I (stupidly) thought it would be a good idea to drive north and spend a few days with friends. (To give you a sense of my poor decision-making in this era, I also thought, stupidly, that sending a book out on submission would be FUN.)
It turns out that when you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a house full of people isn’t exactly the best place to be. Which is how I ended up taking a lot of mournful walks through the town and the campus, weeping dramatically and deciding I would probably never sell another book again…which is also how Amherst ended up as the (loose) model for The Book of Blood and Shadow's college town, because the best way to distract myself on these walks was to take notes and photos for a book I was afraid I'd never get to write.
As luck had it, I was still in Amherst when the call came that a Random House editor had fallen in love with my book, and…reader, she bought it. (That night, you can bet there were truffle fries.) The rest is not quite literary history, but it’s definitely gone down as a series of big days in my mental scrapbook, all ending up with this one.
Final sappy thought for a sappy day: That week I spent in Amherst, I really thought, or at least hoped, that selling this book would change my life. It turns out that what actually changed my life was writing it.
And with that, I will return to my regularly scheduled program of googling myself and gazing at Robert Downey Jr pictures. If I do manage to completely lose my mind today, at least I’m in the right place.
(Oh, I almost forgot: I will be BACK in New York on Wednesday night, for this reading. You should come!)