What a Book in the Hand is Worth...

By Kristyn Crow -

Last week I received a surprise package in the mail. It was my very first hard-bound copy of COOL DADDY RAT. What a surreal experience it was to hold it in my hands. The rhythm drove me along as I wrote this story. I could hear a smooth saxophone and some low drums with a few faint cymbals behind them. It was a jazz rhythm, cool and lingering, the kind that gives you a whole new walk and a breathy talk. You've gotta snap along with it--that's what I thought, but didn't know whether anyone else would "feel" it too. Setting up the internal rhyme was tedious: "He bowed proud to a wowed crowd."

As the manuscript survived countless rewrites over the years, I similarly went on a personal journey of change, growth, and introspection. Revision, especially revising oneself, is always a struggle. To hold COOL DADDY RAT in hand now feels a little bit like swimming underwater though a long, winding channel and finally coming up for a delicious breath of air.

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