See that middle stack there there on my bookshelf? That slim pile of magazines, journals, and anthologies contains the sum total of my various publications over the years. Every time I published a new piece, I added it to the stack with a sense of satisfaction. It was a slow-growing pile, but it was growing, and I gave it good company by shelving many of my favorite books around it.
That bookcase is adjacent to a fireplace, in front of which my laptop and I spent many wintry hours, struggling with the writing of a novel I wasn’t even sure, for a long time, that I wanted to write. See, the thing about writing short stories is this: there’s always hope in the mailbox. Even if you take your time with a story, like I do, you finish it, you send it out, someone accepts it, you look forward to seeing it in print, and you get on to something new. But by the time I realized I was deep into Cascade, deep into writing in a form I was unsure of, I’d published all the stories I’d written, and I knew it was going to be a long time before my stack saw anything new.
I could write a long post that only other writers might want to read, about the angst and joy of writing Cascade, and about the self-doubt that tried to weld itself onto a slender wire of underlying faith, but it will suffice to skip to #TheEnd:
Last week, I got my first printed copy of Cascade from Penguin. The finished jacket is more beautiful than I’d even imagined, with soft raised lettering and inside flaps that are a surprising and pleasing bright green. My initials are stamped into the front of the hardcover binding: MOH. Cascade is permanent and real, with a copyright page and a Library of Congress number.
When I get my other copies from Penguin, I will add one to the horizontal stack, but for now, I can’t resist setting this first one apart, shelved like any book, upright and ready to be read.