The Day...

... has come. Acacia is officially in bookstores as of today. I've been getting asked what sort of special things we have planned to mark the moment. A big party? Triumphant launch of the book tour? Trip to the bookstore at least?...

Well, no. Actually, I'm up this morning like any morning, checking email, letting the cat out, listening to NPR. I'm living up in the hills just now, nowhere near a center of publishing or academia. Not even near very many friends. If the day goes as I see planned I'll spend some time online, write up some evals for students I'm mentoring, answer some estimated tax questions for my accountant, go for a bike ride through the rolling landscape of the foothills, work a little on another interview, and then this evening we're going to have dinner with some of new (and temporary since we'll only be here for few months) neighbors. Chances are they'll have no idea I have a book rolling out onto bookshelves across the country today. (I might tell them, but only if it comes up naturally.)

So, all in all a pretty normal day. At least, normal in terms of my actual surroundings. I did answer an email query from an interested French publisher, and my ear is still sore from several hours on the phone with a movie producer yesterday... So there's a surreal aspect to things as well.

Oh, there's another nice online review just out at SFFWorld. You can get to it here. I realized also that I've been remiss in mentioning the review that went up at Bookie Monster! It's a great one by John Dent of Cardiff, Wales. It's a new sight, but one that I hope gets increasing attention. A Dribble of Ink is another new great new sight, just launched by Aidan Moher. He was kind enough to do an interview with me, which you can read here. Soon they'll be some print media ones coming. I think the first should be out within a week - what could be a very helpful one in Entertainment Weekly!

What's just as exciting for us here in many ways is that my wife just had a good bit of success in her own right. She's been an amateur knitwear designer for some time, making great stuff, mostly for family and friends. She's just made a big leap, though. She's had a design published in Knitty.com, which is the most popular knitwear design site in the country. Literally millions of people will view her design! And that's a guarantee because she got the cover! Her design (and our daughter modeling it) is the very first thing you see when you go to the site. Very cool, and hopefully a start of something for her. She's got a blog up herself. It's called The Shetland Trader and it highlights her Shetland roots and the knitting roots.

Anyway, that's just as much a part of today as any of this book stuff. We're feeling very fortunate, and thankful, just now.