I finally saw The Book yesterday!

It’s definitely been a bit weird having a book on Amazon for nearly a month without ever having seen it.

Of course I viewed the .pdf many times in many stages before co-author Kit Perez uploaded it. But that’s not the same. I don’t have a Kindle reader, I don’t like ebooks, and not holding a paper copy in my hands felt like something was missing. Because something was!

Author copies have been pending, but Amazon’s been in no rush with them. (And that’s okay because they sell us our author copies at cost, rather than at the 50% rate traditional publishers offer.)

But in the first few days after orders commenced, I had deep-night fears of the book turning out all scrambled or otherwise horribly defective. My fears were irrational, but there they were.

Yesterday I finally — and unexpectedly — held my first paperback copy.

—–

I visited friends to help them socialize a dog they’ve been fostering. Poor pup is one of those sad cases who was “loved” by her original family — but never trained, never introduced to outsiders, just neglected and left covered with fleas. Now, at two years, she’s beastly on leash, terrified of strangers, clingy with those she loves, and responds to encroachments with loud hostility.

They’ve been walking her around public places, using techniques against fear aggression, and doing other things to help her. She’s learning, but not quickly. Because she also looks pit bullish or boxerish she’s lost out on three hopeful adoptions. Her fears scared the would-be adopters.

My job was only to tempt her with food, to get her to come to me and accept treats or scritches or toys, then to walk her around their property on leash without them being present. (She was distressed when “Dad” walked off, but she let me lead her; so that was good.) Easy-peasy except for nearly being pulled face first down the steep hills of their land.

Anyhow …

At some point in the proceedings, I glanced down at a coffee table … and there it was.

I tend to have a funny relationship to my books. Once a manuscript has gone off to the publisher, it’s done. Not since my very first books have I been excited to see one in print. By that time, it always feels as if it belongs to someone else.

I got a thrill holding Basics of Resistance, though. Finally, it looked like a book. All our words, the words we struggled over and had doubts about, looked so right and so true. The layout worked. Passages I’d fretted over suddenly seemed authoritative. The book, though a mere 150 pages, had a pleasant heft to it. I loved Kit’s book cover, too. It’s matte instead of the usual glossy laminate, which means it’s going to smudge with handling. OTOH, the stark, flat black and red look so right for the subject matter.

Yep, that was cool.

That I also got a free Mexican dinner and great conversation out of it and might have painlessly helped a foster dog … well, that was a bonus.