This morning, the white towers of earlier drafts of Saving Babe Ruth resemble rockets launching; yesterday, they stood like tombstones marking the graves of all the trees I’ve murdered over the years in writing the book.
How perspective changes with the passage of a single day!
No matter what the perspective, the novel is NOW PUBLISHED!!! You can read the early reviews for the book and get links to Amazon and more reviews here. It’s available as an ebook and paperback today. Distribution will spread to other retail outlets over the next few weeks.
It’s been four years–probably more if I think about it, which I won’t– since I first started writing this novel. People ask me if I’m excited that Saving Babe Ruth is finally being released today. Truth be told, I’m a cauldron of mixed emotions (I think I’ve become bipolar), but relief is the emotion that has prevailed over the past few days.
The novel, for me, has become like a teenage child on the brink of adulthood. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed its company, but I’ve done all I can for it, though I might have overlooked a thing or two. Still, it’s time for it to leave home and see the world and I wish it well. I sincerely hope it enriches the lives of others.
There’s a weird irony of introducing people to something totally new while, at the same time, I’m slowly beginning to shift to a new direction. As much as I might be happy with Saving Babe Ruth, it’s not exactly a healthy thing to be so consumed by one thing for so long. Familiarity with a book can sometimes breed an author’s contempt for it, especially towards the end of the process when you’re living with your book (reading it over and over) like Bill Murray lives his life in Groundhog Day. It’s impossible at this stage to distance yourself from the story to retain any sense of objectivity, but you manage that aspect as best you can. But I do look fondly on it today and I do hope readers will feel the same way.
How do you spell “relief?” You spell it d-o-n-e.
Now I can share Saving Babe Ruth with others; I hope folks find as much meaning in reading it as I did in writing it. Although the book is a work of fiction based on a true story, I think the reader might be very surprised–maybe even shocked–to learn what elements are factually based and what elements are based on fiction. You can actually make some discoveries on the internet by using information provided in the book. I’m really curious to see readers pick up on. I think the book might resonate differently depending on if you’re local or not to the setting of Saving Babe Ruth.
Maybe these are topics for future blog posts and, if they are, you’re not going to want to miss them. So sign up for my e-mail list so you don’t miss another chapter to the story.
Looking back, the two things that have kept me going over the years are my passion for telling this story and the wonderful people I have around me here at home and in the virtual world, especially the ones who volunteered to read the advance reader’s edition. I can’t thank all these wonderful people enough because, without them, there simply would be no Saving Babe Ruth, period.