Awaiting the Birth of My Novel - Reset

Near the end of last week, after years of work, intense effort in the last couple of weeks by my editor, book designer and advanced readers, and many promises to my friends, I uploaded my first novel, Reset, to Amazon. Now when I did that, it was timed so that based on Amazon’s own promised schedule, the e-book and paperback would be published and available to purchase on or before last Friday, December 14. My due date.

Today is Monday December 17, and I realize that is not forever, but while the e-book has been out since last Thursday, the paperback continues to be languishing in the bowels of the Amazon process. Perhaps it is the weekend. Perhaps it is the holidays. Perhaps Santa has called all of his elves back to service, and they are who normally does this for Amazon.

I am not really complaining (as much as it seems). It is like the days before our daughters were born. Their mother, my prior wife, Lisa, was precisely six days late for both of them. Now that doesn’t sound like a long time either, but ask any pregnant mother how long the last six days of pregnancy are. Well, you can ask the father, who has to deal with her in the most loving manner humanly possible for those six grueling days.

Well, it is not nearly as uncomfortable or painful as that, but for me, the gestation period has been 30 months during which my baby was being crafted, beat up, torn apart, rewritten, edited, criticized, torn apart again, and rewritten many more times, before a few people told me, “This is not half bad.” Then they told me, “This is not bad at all,” both of which were honest back-handed compliments. Then, after another editor and more beta readers and more rewrites, I approached, “This is really OK, BUT . . . .” And finally, in the last several months, with the help of my third editor, people actually said, “Damn, Ned, this is good. I loved reading it.”

So, my baby is about half born, which luckily does not happen with real babies. The e-book is out. The easiest way to find it is to go to my website at www.nedlips.com.  Now I’m waiting patiently for the rest of my baby to be born. Come on Amazon. Come on paperback!