A Note Before Release

There is a strange point in publishing when you realize the book is still technically yours, but you have almost run out of ways to keep it that way.

For months, The Colors That Haunt Us has been something I could open and change whenever I wanted. If a sentence bothered me, I fixed it. If a paragraph caught strangely on a reread, I moved things around. If the formatting looked wrong, I went back into the file.

There was always another task waiting between me and finished: drafting, revising, revising again, discovering a problem much later than would have been convenient, fixing that problem, proofreading, doing the final flow pass, formatting, checking the formatting, and then checking it again because apparently I do not trust myself.

Then came the cover, preorder pages, metadata, graphics, announcements, and all the other things required to turn a manuscript into something another person can actually buy.

For a long time, I could always answer the anxiety of publication by finding something to do.

I am reaching the point where there is not much left.

That may be the weirdest part.

There is less left to hide behind

Writing a book can stay surprisingly private even after other people have read drafts.

As long as I am still editing, everything remains negotiable. If someone is confused, I can look at the page and decide whether I need to clarify something. If a scene is not working, I can change it. If I reach what is supposedly my final editing pass and suddenly realize I need to rewrite the last thirty percent of the novel, I can apparently do that too.

Publication eventually takes that option away.

At some point, I stop asking what else the manuscript needs and have to decide whether I am ready for other people to have it.

I am much better at the first question.

I know how to revise. I know how to make a list, identify a problem, break it into smaller problems, and keep working until I have dealt with them.

Handing the finished thing over is harder because there is no checklist for what happens afterward.

Soon, people will know these characters without me

This is the part I keep coming back to.

People are going to meet Clara and Suzette without me there to explain anything.

They are going to enter Rosenfeld Manor, decide who they trust, notice things I hoped they would notice, and almost certainly miss details I thought were obvious.

Someone may love a scene I nearly cut. Someone may dislike one I fought to keep. Readers will decide for themselves whether something feels romantic or unsettling, whether they forgive a character, whether a choice was justified, and whether the ending gives them hope.

I have spent years choosing what goes onto the page. Once someone starts reading, I no longer get to choose what those pages become for them.

That loss of control is intimidating, but it is also part of what I have been working toward.

I want readers to have opinions I did not give them.

My brain is convinced there must be another step

I have become so accustomed to there being another task that I keep expecting one to appear.

Surely there is another pass I forgot.

Another form.

Another file.

Another bit of metadata hiding somewhere.

Another tiny formatting issue waiting until the worst possible moment to reveal itself.

Part of me expects someone to arrive and explain that I have missed seventeen obscure publishing rituals and the book cannot legally exist until I complete them.

So far, no one has.

October 8 keeps getting closer anyway.

The Colors That Haunt Us is going to come out, and people will be able to read it.

I have said variations of that sentence for months. It still feels strange when I actually think about what it means.

I cannot reduce this to one clean emotion

I am excited. Very excited.

I am also nervous, proud, exhausted, curious about what I will do differently next time, and fighting the occasional urge to open the manuscript and invent another editing pass simply because the file still exists.

Finishing something I have worked on for this long was never going to produce one tidy emotion.

I am relieved that I made it here. I am going to miss this stage of the book, even though I have spent a considerable portion of it complaining about editing. I am proud of what I made. I am also capable of briefly convincing myself that I have somehow forgotten how books work and everyone else will discover this immediately.

Mostly, though, I keep thinking about the fact that something that has lived in my head and on my computer for so long is about to start showing up elsewhere.

On someone's shelf.

On an e-reader.

In someone's thoughts while they are supposed to be doing something completely unrelated.

Maybe, if I am lucky, it will stay there for a while.

Letting go sounds easier before you have to do it

I wrote recently about knowing when a story is ready to let go.

Writing that post was easier than reaching the point where I actually have to follow my own advice.

I want readers to bring themselves to my stories. I want two people to disagree about what an ending means. I want someone to message me oh no because they have realized where something is going. I want readers to find things in the book that I never consciously put there.

I cannot ask for that and also insist on controlling exactly what the story means once it leaves me.

Eventually, I have to trust the work I already did.

That does not require believing every sentence is untouchable. Give me enough time and I could find something to change in almost anything I have ever written. I expect that will still be true years from now.

What matters is that I have finished this version of the book.

The Colors That Haunt Us is almost no longer a manuscript I can keep fussing with privately. It is becoming something readers can pick up, interpret, argue with, love, dislike, misunderstand, understand in ways I did not expect, and carry somewhere I cannot follow.

I still want to check it one more time.

I suspect I will continue wanting that right up until checking it again stops being an option.

But underneath the nerves, the exhaustion, and the lingering suspicion that I have forgotten one extremely important task, I keep coming back to the same thought:

I am ready for people to meet it.