Writing--no, scratch that; publishing is not for the impatient. And I am the mother of impatience. Which is why I'm kind of amazed that I haven't thrown a hissy fit yet. (Yet, I emphasize.)
No, actually I know exactly why I haven't. It's because I'm so damn busy. I don't have time to be impatient. As a matter of fact, days are going by like sand through toes at the surfline. Like, for instance, it's Tuesday already and--what do you mean Thursday? I NEED MY WEDNESDAY BACK!
I mean, how hard can it be? THE MIRACLE OF SMALL THINGS had already been published in Pure Slush's 2014 A Year In Stories. Well, sort of. Last year, when Truth Serum Press (sister press of Pure Slush) agreed to publish it as a standalone book, we felt there was a piece missing from the original 12 stories, so--okay, I wrote a 13th story. Which turned out a tad longer than expected. And took longer, too, to finish. (I sweated blood on that one.)
But aside from that, I thought it was a matter of some small (fine, smallish) revisions. You know, quirky wording that somehow escaped both my and the editor's eagle eyes the first few times. And then there were the places where, due to the word count limit for the originals, I cut character arcs short or held back on information that actually did move the story forward. So these things had to be remedied for the standalone version. And then revised. And re-revised. And re-re-re...