Publishing Party

Toasts, snacks, and bookmarks bearing the cover art of our title--the publishing of Dear Journal, You're Freaking Me Out is official.
 
Though I wrote a chapter, participated in numerous author meetings, and edited and helped shoot the trailer video for the book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET79JP7lpbE), the whole publishing part has been a bit unreal to me. While it is not a book in my hand, it is most certainly a book I bought from Amazon's e-book selection (http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Journal-Youre-Freaking-Out-ebook/dp/B00VS07YD2). It lives on my phone, and hopefully, soon, on many other people's phones and iPads and Kindles. It is real. And I was (and am) part of it.
 
As I mingled at the publishing party tonight, I found myself talking primarily to my co-authors, most of whom would happily go through such a process again. It was challenging--bringing together the needs and interests of twenty writers, creating a coherent entity from so many different viewpoints and styles, carving out time in already busy lives. Yet, in the end, we are staring at a book we wrote. We are toasting not some other author's publication, but our own. We are taking what we learned in the process, and moving on to the next steps in our lives. Perhaps with a little more confidence, a few new skills, and the perspectives of a room full of co-authors, who, in some ways, will become our collaborators for life.