I’ve been trying to make peace with this release all week, literally, since last Tuesday morning when the Amazon page for The Understory said in big, bold letters Out of Stock. If there’s anything an author doesn’t want to hear on release day it’s that (I mean, unless it’s because they sold through their stock, which I’m not sure was the problem here). I described it to someone like spending two years planning a huge surprise birthday party, and then everyone shows up, but there’s no presents, no balloons, no food platters, no cakes, no favors, just a bunch of empty handed people standing around wondering why they showed up. I felt apologetic. I felt sad. I felt angry. I felt embarrassed. I felt like instead of spending the week celebrating, I was going to be spending the week trying to figure out just what went wrong here.