Forty days and forty nights. That is how long it has been since I sent in the final manuscript to the publisher a day ahead of our deadline. The months leading up to that day were like a series of daily sprints. Each day had a goal to chip away at the 50,000 words we were on the hook to produce for the publisher. If I had a 1000 word day, I felt great. Anything less than that, I felt like I fell short. I don't think I have had that clear of a daily goal since I cut grass in a summer job. Since then, the pace has been exactly the opposite. We just wait for the publisher to get back to us and we can't even touch the master copy, as they now own any and all edits. They did a very nice job of explaining that and setting expectations when we submitted the manuscript. Still, it is a weird transition to go from having the book be all consuming to radio silence. I would like to think that our draft was so perfectly designed and worded that the editors are struggling to find a single word to change, and that is what is taking so long. More realistically, I know from the overview of the process that they gave us that this is how it works. Oh well, stay tuned.