When you have a large book family...

Well, that's another book released into the wild.

You know that metaphor about books being like babies?  The 'nine months gestation and worrying that everyone will think it's ugly, and the big 'push' before it's released' and all that?  I've just found another one...

This one. Available here

With your first baby/book, everyone gets terribly excited. You get lots of advice and then, once it's born, lots of sympathy when things don't quite go the way you expected.  People ask how it's doing, make 'ooh' and 'ahh' noises, send flowers and are generally very interested in the whole process.

When book/baby number two comes along, everyone is impressed that you felt you could do it all again, particularly with the fuss you made the first time, and the level of complaining.  But they admire your determination and, whilst they aren't popping round with flowers and home-made rice puddings any more, they enquire politely after your book/offspring, remember its birthday and give you a nice level of reassurance that it will all be all right and the first one won't be jealous.

By the time you get to book/baby number five (I only had five babies, so this possibly continues but I shall NOT be finding out), your announcement is greeted with groans, a level of 'oh, not another one, what do you want to keep doing that for', as though you personally wrote/got pregnant simply to annoy other people.  From number one, where everyone assured you that they would keep an eye out for it/buy it/come round straight away (only two of these apply equally to babies and books, try to work out which one doesn't), you now get a more lack-lustre 'well, if I'm passing and I like the look of it, I might try.'  However...

Little Teashop of Horrors is my eleventh published book and, I am delighted to say, its birth was greeted with just as much excitement as Book Number One.  It seems that the news of the pending arrival is met with less enthusiasm than the actual delivery, whereupon, like with babies, everyone overcomes their initial reluctance and discovers that, really, it doesn't matter whether it's first born or one of many, every single one is an individual with its own little personality. And cover.

Thank you to everyone who congratulated me on my new book baby. I'll take those home-made rice puddings now...