What a long, strange trip it's been.

Peter has Maxwell 5, Stoke the Flames Higher, released to the wilds of the internet today. It's been so long living with the book hanging over our heads, well over a year after he thought he could finish it, that it's still taking time to process the idea of the book being done, gone, out to readers.

(Okay, I still have promotion to do, although I got the newsletter out this morning. But that post-publication checklist is rapidly dwindling, especially with turning print and audio over to Castalia house.)

Now for that strange post-piece period in an artist's household, when Peter looks around and sees things that have been ignored for months under the fog of ill health and press of plot: the boxes in the living room that he plunked there when we moved in, back in February, and has been grumbling that he'll get to when he has time, and don't move them, wife, because you won't put them in the right heap in the garage. (The garage still has to be unpacked, too.)

Meanwhile, I wake up, take a deep breath, and look around, too, at the things that I've let slide: the pile of laundry I've been stealing clean clothes out of instead of folding, the floors that need swept, the pile of mail that wasn't urgent to deal with... And that diet and exercise thing. Blargh.

Some households make new year's resolutions, and base their spurts of activity annually. Some have the "when the kids are back in school." Ours, apparently, has "Once the book is done."

I feel better knowing I'm not alone, and other author spouses confirm this is normal, and the weirdness shall soon pass. Or, to quote one, "Yeah, two weeks. After about two weeks, he starts getting really distracted plotting, and then starts sneaking off to write instead of doing the chores..."