Naomi -- who is Naomi Hirahara, author of THE BIG BACHI -- asks:

"Only a month until the launch date--are you going nuts?"

To which I answer, totally.

The official launch is a reading at Partners and Crime in NY on Oct. 5 (though I'll also be at the Black Orchid booth at New York is Book Country the weekend before -- Oct. 3&4 -- so that's the book's first public appearance). The official publication date is a week before that, Sept. 28. That's about 6 weeks from now. This means the early reviews -- the trades, which are Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus and Library Journal -- could come any time now. I'm chewing my fingernails big time.

The reason Naomi says "a month" is that the official publication date is not a date on which anything actually happens. A book starts to ship out from the warehouse a couple of weeks before that date, and pops up in the stores starting about a week after shipping begins. Which is a month from now. The publication date is the date by which a publisher is guaranteeing the book will be in stores, so if a media outlet wants to run a review or put you on an interview show, they'll know when to schedule it so that an interested reader can actually buy the thing and won't call them up demanding to know where to get it.