The Rules of Love & Grammar, published by Little, Brown & Company, is in bookstores as of today and can also be ordered from online book sellers. I can hardly believe it. The process of having a book published, once you turn in your manuscript, seems about as long as the gestation period of an elephant. Well, maybe not quite that long, but close. There are so many steps to be dealt with, and as an author you’re involved in a number of them – reviewing changes suggested by your editor and making the ones you feel will strengthen the story (most of them in my case), reviewing the questions and proposed changes suggested by the copyeditor/fact checker and making the changes you think will improve the story (again, I agreed with most of the suggestions, especially where my copyeditor caught my grammatical errors – ouch!), and finally, proofreading the galley.That’s a hard copy of the typeset manuscript, in which each page looks just as it will when the book is printed. The manuscript is constantly coming back to you during these stages and it’s not until months later that you receive the ARC (advance reader copy). That’s a paperback version of a nearly final draft and it’s sent to hundreds of recipients for marketing and sales purposes. After that, the next and last thing you receive is the final, bound book – a beautiful hardcover bearing the dust jacket you’ve only seen, up to that point, in photos. It’s a very exciting moment, even if it has been a long time coming. I can tell you it’s well worth the wait.