An Open Letter

Hey! The paperback of Practically Perfect in Every Way comes out today!

When I turned in the manuscript two years ago, I was very, very sick of thinking about myself. In my work with Brain, Child, I’m either on the phone with Steph, emailing writers/artists/photographers, checking in with other editors, writing a newsletter for readers, blahdee blah. In other words, interacting with people. Whatever I did next, I thought, it best be collaborative. This life of being sent off to work alone in the attic for months at a time? Who am I—Emily Dickinson?

I didn’t realize then that the really collaborative part comes after, and it’s between the reader and the writer. Because, hey, you can write all you want and even get a publisher to snazz it up between two covers, but if no one reads it and no one talks about it, it might as well not exist.

This is all to say thank you for making PPIEW exist. I’m offering up all the gratitude in my moderately hopeless little heart to everyone who bought the book, read the book, posted a review on Amazon or Good Reads or Library Thing, wrote about it online or in print, recommended it to a friend, invited me to a book club, come out on my travels last year, had me at their bookstore, had me on their show, sent me a kind email, or somehow felt a connection to the book.

Mad love to you. And now let the Amazon ranking obsession begin anew.