It must be synchronicity...In Sunday's New York Times Book Review there's a wonderful essay by Rachel Donadio, called "Waiting for It."

In it, Donadio talks about the strange delay between selling a book and seeing it appear in the world, saying, '"For writers, few steps in the publishing process are as strange as the state of suspended animation between submitting a manuscript and seeing the book appear in stores. The sudden change in cabin pressure from writing to waiting can be jarring — and can last a very long time. “It comes as a huge shock when it happens the first time,” said the Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose first novel, “The South,” appeared in 1990, a year and a half after he turned it in. “It was all slow and strange.”'

I sold The Monsters of Templeton in October 2006, and it is just coming out this week, to my everlasting delight. I know exactly what Colm Toibin is saying. It is makes my head ring just to think that an entire year and a half has passed between the sale of the book and its release; everything has gone at the pace of a flood of molasses. Though I understand now why things had to happen the way they did, and am so grateful for all of the wonderful marketing and publicity and editing that have happened in that time, the Lauren who, at 27, finished Monsters (it took me a few months to gather my courage to submit it to agents) and the 29-year-old Lauren who is seeing it come out are very different creatures, indeed.

For one, I'm married. For two, I'm living in Gainesville, of all places. For three, I have the constant and nagging fear that that year and a half of expectation threw me off my game a little. It'll remain to be seen if that's the case.

Honestly, it feels like a gestating baby who has gone a few years beyond her duedate. One can only hope that she'll be talking and walking and potty trained and ready for Montessouri by the time she comes out.

Now all I have to do is cross my fingers and--well--push.