Insta-Publish

I just published a book, after a whopping three days of hard work. Ah, the wonders of modern technology... and oh, the innocence of us. I mean, who says "Sure, we can have that manuscript that hasn't been touched in years published and ready to order by next week"? I do.

I'm sorta pleased with it... I wrote this book when I was very young (even younger than I am now) so it has a soft spot in my soul. In fact, it was my very first novel. I really wasn't planning to publish it this year, but a strange thing happened. You see, some time ago my family was going to start a publishing company called Paper Birch Books. We built a Web site for it and everything. And one of the books we planned to release was Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe--the stellar piece of literature in question. Well, the publishing company never actually happened, but the Web site never came down. (We don't take old Web sites down... we leave them to litter the cyberpaths of yore in hopes that someone may shed a tear for us, or trip on them, or something.)

Last week a woman was delving into the internet's hidden secrets and she came across our Web page. Apparently she has a father who shares his name with my main character. The father is turning eighty or so and she wants a copy for his birthday. At the end of the week. So of course I said "Yes, we can do that." What else should I say?

I formatted the book and put front matter together while my talented sister Deborah worked feverishly to create original artwork for the cover. We uploaded the whole thing to Lulu.com and bang whizz presto, there it is. Admittedly, it's not very officially published. It still lacks an ISBN and a few critical go-overs. But it's readable, it's pretty, and it's available for purchase. That's what counts, right?

Theodore watched as the green thing plummeted to the ground. It bounced up and landed in the grass with a gentle thump. He raced for the landing site.

"Now where did it go?" he mumbled as he searched. His hands parted the grass in front of him and the thing was suddenly in plain view. His eyes got even wider, seeming to swell with wonder.

It was a spaceship.

Nice, eh?