I've always dreamed of walking into a bookstore and finding my book there, and today was the first time this actually happened. I walked into a local bookstore in Tel Aviv and found my book Lazaretto (לזארטו) on the shelf (after a brief chat with the seller she even moved it to the front).


(top shelf, third from the right)

It's pretty amazing to think of the process it went through. Just a few years ago this book existed only in my mind as a vague concept, shapeless and full of possibilities. Then, once I started writing it, it became a gradually expanding and mutating file (or several files) on my computer. When it was finally accepted for publication (the road to publication is a story for a different post), it began slowly taking shape as something that begins to resemble an actual book - it was edited, proofread, formatted into neat pages, it received an ISBN and a cover image, and finally it arrived in my hands as an advance copy. But to me the process wasn't complete until I saw it in a bookstore.

Of course, now I have new dreams and ambitions - to have people read the book, to get reviews (preferably good), and to get the English version published as well. I hope detailing my experiences on this blog will prove interesting and perhaps even helpful to fellow writers.