Argh Ten

Ten Things That Always Seem to Happen The Week Your Book is Released

Appliance Fail: a major or integral appliance in your home that has never once given you a second of trouble will stop working, start leaking or emit a stream of dark oily smoke when you turn it on.

Comrade in Harm: In the process of congratulating you a colleague will artfully mention that they're not buying your new release because they're too busy to read it, they prefer another author in that genre, or the whole idea really wasn't their cup of tea.

E-mail Gainer: Your incoming e-mail will quadruple, and about a third of it will be from people who have never before contacted you but bought your book the second it hit the shelf, hated it, and now want to tell you in excruciating detail why.

Gaming Glom: To stop from thinking about your release on Monday you'll find an online version of Candy Crush and decide to try playing it for the first time. By Wednesday you'll be competing in tournaments. By Friday you will be the highest-ranked Candy Crush player on that site.

Gone Data Gone: Your editor, publicist or video producer will need a vital bit of information from you asap, which is part of a file you discover you can't open, you can't remember what you named, or that you deleted last month while cleaning up your hard drive.

Honey Huh: About halfway through the week your honey will call home to see if you performed some time-sensitively and extremely vital task s/he needed you to do, which you haven't. Worse, you will have zero recollection of agreeing to do it.

Match Game: You won't understand why all the book store managers keep giving you such odd looks until you get home from a long day of making the rounds and realize as you undress that your shoes don't match, you're wearing your shirt inside-out, and/or the bright red lipstick that still gleams on your mouth is all over your front teeth, too.

Pet Pouting: The well-behaved, healthy, house-trained furry friends who are always content to slumber away most of the day suddenly become crazed demons of destruction with severe tummy troubles who sit at your hip and whine to go outside. Every. Five. Minutes.

Takeout Tonight: While worrying about your release's debut, how it will be received, if it will sell, how many copies are hitting the stores and why in God's name you every thought this was a wonderful job, you will finally remember you have to make dinner. This will happen no earlier than thirty seconds before dinner time.

Writer's Blech: As you begin to perform a reading, chat up a reader, introduce yourself over a microphone or pitch your release to an important industry entity over the phone, your nervous digest system will surge to produce audible flatulence, a generous amount of bile going the wrong way or an involuntary burp that not only escapes but can be measured on the Richter scale.