I finished Now You See Me, the fourth Molly Blume on January 30 (on deadline!) and e-mailed the manuscript to my editor. I'm fortunate to have an editor who reads promptly (from my experience, and from that of other writers, I know that's not always the case), and he responded to me two days later:
He loves the book.
I'm elated, and relieved. Because as I've mentioned before, you never know...
I suspect that most authors live with that same kind of fearful anticipation. One of my favorite literary anecdotes involves Nathaniel Hawthorne. Apparently, his editor went to Salem to visit him (Hawthorned was working at the Salem Custom House at the time, and hating it). The editor hadn't received anything from his author for some time, and although Hawthorne told him he had nothing to show him, the editor, prescient man that he was, insisted on poking through Hawthorne's small apartment and came across a manuscript.
"What's this, Nathaniel?" the editor asked. (Or maybe he called him Nat, or Nate.) "Why haven't you sent this to me?"
Hawthorne replied, "I don't know. It's either the best thing I've ever written, or the worst.
The manuscript was published as The Scarlet Letter.
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