As advance copies of The Confessions of Adam go out and are read, I’ve entered this strange new land. I’ve ceased to interact with the words on the page and am now listening to readers’ perspectives of the novel. Listening to the first members of my audience—my first readers—as they make the book their own.

This is a new skill. 

Like learning to talk about any major event in your life, it isn’t simply the vocabulary and the formation of concepts and constructs for thinking about it, but also learning what to say and what not to say and—in this case—slowly forming the language needed to comment while doing all I can to support the reader as they have their experience. 

I am humbled and amazed that a story I have written is functioning at a level that causes readers to think about relationships, motivations, and choices. I am learning, not what I have written, but all that what I have written can potentially mean. 

It is a strange new land. But like every stage of this adventure, it is proving to be a gift.