Birthing a Book

Jan 11, 2026

A favorite photo from the book: “You can’t take a bad photo of a highway.”

“Book Birthday” is a popular phrase in the publishing industry for the day a book is published.

I’m not sure if it’s a book’s birthday or a book’s graduation, though.

I think a book’s gestation period might take place nine months before you get the idea for the story. Then you put all sorts of work into feeding the idea, reading parenting manuals, joining mommy and daddy groups, taking your idea to playdates and lessons, and then, finally, celebrating graduation with the hope that you did a good enough job so that your book will step boldly out onto bookshelves to face its fate.

It is a moment to be nervicited, my favorite made-up word (thanks, My Little Pony!).

My book, something out there in the distance, is “being born,” or graduating, this Tuesday, January 13.

I previously wrote about the book’s origin story and published an excerpt, so I won’t repeat the story other than to say that I’m especially in love with this particular book because it’s very different than most books. I wrote the story to my friend Gail Butensky’s amazing photos of the Southwest. It’s a road trip, a tragic love affair. It’s a “flash novel,” a prose poem.

Now, like a baby or a graduate, it lives in a suspended state, existing in a threshold, a doorway, an ellipsis, between what was and what will be.

Sylvia Plath compared giving birth to “boarding a train you can’t leave,” and it’s a little like that. My book and I will never leave each other now on this journey.

Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” (1678) is the foundational literary work on sending your book into the world. Her book becomes her child in an extended metaphor—she’s embarrassed when it’s snatched from her and exposed to the critical public, seeing its unwashed face, rags, and ungainly limbs, yet she’s protective of her creation.

Other metaphors for a book’s birth

I also think of my book as a bird I’ve raised. I’ve taught it everything, and now I have to nudge it from the nest. I can’t fly it myself, so it either catches the wind or it doesn’t.

Or, my book is a party guest. I’ve dressed it up in a nice cover design and brought it to the party (the marketplace). I can introduce it around, make sure it’s not standing alone in the corner. But I can’t force people to like it or talk to it.

Publication is a paradox: you’ve created something totally yours, poured everything into it, but now you must surrender it to become something else—a public commodity, a reader’s private experience.

I hope you’ll read my book. I hope you’ll talk with it at the party.

Please buy my book!

Because I love the trailer for my book

I actually think of my book trailer as a music video, featuring a song from my new favorite band, The Renderers: “Dream of the Sea.” Watch! Listen!

One more chance to buy my book!

Because there’s also a playlist for the book

Tom Waits. Gowns. Neko Case. Yo La Tengo. Mekons. Calexico. Smog. Cat Power. Sarah Shook. Silver Jews. Wilco. Steve Earle. PJ Harvey. Lucinda Williams. Townes Van Sandt. Barbara Manning. Jason Isbell. And more …

We tried to capture the mood of the book through songs, many of them about road trips—because every good road trip needs a playlist.

Listen to the book's playlist!