Paul Kemp

For anyone who’s had the chance to read Red Hood yet, if you felt like posting a review at Amazon and helping to knock that Harriet Klausner review off the front page, I’d be much obliged.  “Little Lady of the Red Hood” indeed…

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I’m back!  Had a lovely vacation up north.  Kids spent most of the week swimming and working on their sunburns.  Everyone stayed up way too late, and most days I got to sleep in until 9 or even 10 in the morning.

Stopped by the local bookstore, which didn’t have Red Hood, but did have Crosscurrent [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] by my friend Paul Kemp.  It took me a few chapters to really get into it, mostly because I haven’t been reading the expanded universe Star Wars stuff, so I didn’t know the characters or recent events.  But it was a fun story (Star Wars + time travel!), albeit a bit dark at times, and an excellent vacation read.  Finished the book in about a day.

Ah, vacation…

I also hopped online a few times to check e-mail, Amazon ranking, Bookscan numbers, and so on.  Vacation or no, my book was coming out, and I had to be there!  I had to be doing something.  I had to … well … I don’t know.  It’s kind of strange, actually.  Turns out my book was released just fine without me.

Could it be that I didn’t need to be online 24/7 when the book came out?  Crazy talk, I know.  I mean, I did have some blog posts prewritten and scheduled, and I had warned my wife that we’d need to drive into town so I could post a Twitter update or two on release day … but we didn’t get into town until later that afternoon, and as far as I could tell, books continued to sell even when I wasn’t watching.  Heck, it’s too early to say for certain, but this one might even be selling better than the previous books.

Weird.

None of this comes as a real surprise.  Intellectually, I know my control and influence over the book is pretty much done the day I turn in the final manuscript.  Emotionally though, I still like to pretend I’m involved, and to cling to the illusion that I continue to have more control over the fate of the book.

Time to let go, I suppose.  Fly, little book.  Be free.  Enjoy your time on the New Releases shelf.  August will be here all too soon, and then far too many of you will be stripped and returned.  But until then, get out there and make your author proud.

Tomorrow I’ll probably be putting up a discussion post for the book.  And apropos of nothing, here’s a shot from when I was playing with the panorama setting on our digital camera last week.  Click for full size.