The First Day

by Elizabeth Fortin

Everyone has experienced a memorable first day. Many young mothers on my Facebook page have been commenting on various feelings as their children are going off to their first day of school, including nostalgic memories of their own first days. Others have commented on the first day of a newborn's life, on a new job, a first date, or the first time they visited a special location or participated in a new activity.

I have had so many personal firsts this year, I don't have time to list them all here. However, the birth of our publishing company is a first none of us will forget. The entire staff is oscillating from confident pride, anticipation and excitement to humble trepidation and insecurity.

We are fairly confident in our own skills and decision making abilities, but rising anxiety revolves around our use of technology. Should the doctor or the midwife birth our new baby? Which program? Which company? Which formats? How much will it cost? Technology is a miraculous, ever-changing tool. However, it is also only as good as the programmers and users involved in the execution of any singular task.

When you're an electronic-first publishing company, you depend exclusively on the electronic interaction of dozens of people, programs and machines. Though you try to coordinate every detail to the precise moment the baby is "launched", it is a harrowing task--or should I say hundreds of harrowing tasks performed by a dozen people over the past nine months?

It is less than three days until the launch of Tell-Tale Publishing. All the employees are involved in the process on some level. In fact, we've hired extra help. Everything that should be done, has been done. All the little twinges are being tweaked. When all is said and done, it is a nonstop learning process that however perfected is still subject to the often fickle reaction of technology and someone else's employees and programs. I think come Thursday night we will all tip a glass of wine and toast our months of hard work and prepare for the further success of our talented authors. Wish us luck!