I had two packages waiting for me at home when I got home from work last night.<\/p>\n
One was from WhoNA<\/a>. The other, a surprise, was from the UK.<\/p>\n I’d received my contributor’s copy of Doctor Who<\/i>: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership<\/i>.<\/p>\n And, because I’d ordered one from WhoNA earlier in the week, thinking that, Big Finish being a small press, I wouldn’t have my contributor’s copy for a while, I had another copy of the book.<\/p>\n The cover is gorgeous. Something’s lost when you see it on a computer monitor. The images aren’t quite as sharp. It’s not as tactile. In person, it’s a different beast entirely. Gorgeous.<\/p>\n And the book itself!<\/p>\n It’s a hardcover. I love the paper stock. It’s a heavy paper stock. It has such a wonderful aroma — the paper, the ink — and I drank it in, the way I would savor a fine scotch.<\/p>\n I flipped through the book. Not specifically to my story, though I got there eventually. It was a book! A book!<\/p>\n I’d seen the book before; the galleys were sent out as a PDF of the entire manuscript. I’d seen all of these pages, I’d printed out a lot of these pages six months ago and read them. But there was something completely different about seeing them in<\/i> a book, bound, printed on both sides, where I could flip through at leisure.<\/p>\n And my own story! I’d seen it before. I’d seen the manuscript, as I’d written it. I’d seen the layout in the PDF. Inside the book, though, it was like discovering something I’d never seen before.<\/p>\n God, I’m a total nutter.<\/p>\n I don’t think there’s a feeling like it in the world, to get in your hands something you’ve written and see it published, in black and white, bound, and on paper. At work, even after a year, I still get a tingly, geeky feeling when I receive copies of the publications I’ve written and worked on. Yes, I’ve seen these words time and again, first in my word processir, then in layouts in various stages, but there’s nothing quite<\/i> like seeing it, complete, on the printed page.<\/p>\n I’ve come down from my geeky high of yesterday.<\/p>\n At least until the next time I pick up The Quality of Leadership<\/i>, run my fingers across the cover, crack open the spine, and dive into the book.<\/p>\n Because, there really isn’t<\/i> anything like that feeling in the world. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had two packages waiting for me at home when I got home from work last night. One was from WhoNA. The other, a surprise, was from the UK. I’d received my contributor’s copy of Doctor Who: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership. And, because I’d ordered one from WhoNA earlier in the week, thinkingContinue reading “On Geeking Out”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4082,4102],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-doctor-who","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}