I barely slept last night thanks to constant nightmares about my picture book. The press check is tomorrow, and I'm assured that everything will go well now that we've seen the proofs, but there's a part of me that keeps thinking the pages will be out of order or upside down. I had a horrible nightmare that my illustrator, who is going to the press check, suddenly hated everything and trashed the book on the press, leaving me with a whole lot of nothing to show for a major financial investment.
To be honest, this is the first time I've laid out this kind of money for a project. When I produced plays, I invested some money but not to this scale. I won't give numbers, but I'm on the hook enough that if this project fails, I'll be working at a Tim Hortons for a year.
The printer (Friesens) have a great customer service representative who has obviously had to hold hands of other self-publishers as they fretted through the process, but it still doesn't make the waiting any easier. I suspect I won't be sleeping tonight either. I'll relax when I get the call from my illustrator that everything looks good and the pages are in the right order.
I'm positively sick today. I don't know if I'll be able to concentrate, but I'll do my best to think about anything other than the picture book.
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