It's funny to think that years of work are over and my memoir Ghost Wife is finished. It came back from the printer just before Christmas; instead of being a manuscript that lives mainly in my head, now it's a book, an actual thing, and it's sitting on a shelf in my living room. It's a weird thing at first when something you've lived with for so long as an idea becomes a physical presence, a paper-and-ink manifestation, something fixed. I actually feel a bit awkward around it right now, because I don't know what to do with it. It's as though it's a child newly returned from boarding school, a child who's become, in absence, taller, bolder, and changed in invisible but undeniable ways. Of course, it's the same child beneath it all, but it's something else too, now. I steal glances at it from time to time; other times, distracted, I forget and then remember that it's my own.
You will have a chance to see it very soon. Bookseller + Publisher magazine has already published the first review, noting 'deftly drawn' descriptions of landscape and 'pitch-perfect atmosphere.' The book will be released at the end of February, so now, in these final, weird days, I am gearing up for all the promotional activities ahead (more on those to follow) . . . and stealing sidelong glances at this newest addition to the bookshelf.