Today my second novel, True Biz, comes out in paperback. Unless you are Big Famous™, paperback launches are kind of strange non-events in these—post-COVID? post-BookTok?—days, so there is not much for me to do. Very different from the first go-around of this book’s life, when Reese frickin’ Witherspoon was leading the charge and there were things to write and videos to make. Still, I’ve been excited about this day for a while. Mainly, I’m looking forward to this book becoming more accessible—28 bucks is a lot of money, and I hope that a life in paperback will get this book in the hands of deaf/disabled readers, and people who might not have reliable access to a library.

Still, I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. Maybe, I thought, an “unboxing” video would be fun; read: elderly millennial, waning technological relevancy. But if you want to know the truth, I haven’t actually seen the paperback in real life. (Thanks…DeJoy?) Maybe I’ll go to a bookstore later to wave hello. If you see it in the wild, send me me a pic?

As a general rule, I hate metaphors that compare one’s books to one’s children, or refer to writing as “giving birth” to a novel. Even before becoming a mom I disliked them, but now, having written actual books and given actual birth, I can officially report that writing a book is definitely not like being in labor. Writing can be really hard, tortuous even. But labor is physically hard. And while novel writing is about uncovering and refining a narrative, honing it until you have control over all the moving parts, labor, and what comes after in parenting, is mostly about the loss of control—of one’s own body, and of what kind of parent you dreamed you might be.