On Publishing a Novel: The Surprises of 1st Pass Edits

I recently finished reading over Girl Through Glass in first pass edits. It's the first time in a long time;I have read the whole novel through. It's been a deeply strange, often thrilling experience... something like meeting an old friend who keeps surprising you. Books have been, tiredly, compared to children, but I see now the analogy: we care for them, nurture them; they leave us, we must let them go... I hope Girl Through Glass comes into the world with a fanfare and makes the deep connection with readers that I imagined all the years I was writing it!

A beautiful, surprising part of this stage is the I’ve fallen in love with the publisher's chosen font for the novel's pages. I never gave much thought to the mechanics of the book-making, but going through this process has bred a new love for the elegance of publishing process, and a new level of gratitude for my amazing editor and the terrific team at Harper.