...and just like that, Forsaken Realm: The Light Within is out in the world. Capable of being bought, read, loved, hated, and experienced, whether good or bad. I'm very excited to have "my baby" out there for the world to see and experience, but there's also an unexpected vulnerability to the whole thing, a feeling of being very exposed. It's all good and well to say (as I do) that I'm excited to have it out there, because it's too big to live only in the mind of myself or in the minds of a few, and I believe that, but it's scary at the same time.
There was no hoopla, no bells, no whistles, just a few keystrokes late at night after years of work to get it to that point. But that seems appropriate, after all, that kind of quiet intimacy is how books are experienced, and it seems only right that my final moment with the book that had been mine came to an end with an unheard goodbye kiss in the middle of the night before dancing across the minds of others for the first time, quietly, intimately. Forsaken Realm is no longer mine. Not even Mine and Akeem's. It now belongs to everyone who reads it. Everyone who pictures the characters a certain way, and hears their voices with different inflections, sees them strike different poses than I envisioned. I guess that is the beauty of a story--each reader has a singularly unique experience, my static words transformed into a myriad of different realities.
Whoa.
