If it seems I’ve not been quite myself this week, at least here on miscmum, you’d be quite right.

In a nutshell: it appears that a number - not an insignificant number - of my book copies arrived back from Asia with marks on one of the pages that are totally unsatisfactory. I paid for 100% quality, and this I did not get.

I was unamused.

To be fair, though, the printing company have totally agreed with my complaint and will re-print the affected number of copies.

I stress this: anyone who is about to receive - or has already received - a copy of Surprise! can be totally assured their copy was in pristine condition: this is because I checked it myself. As I will for thousands of others next week. Because next week I will be sitting in my distributor’s warehouse, by myself, for a whole day sorting the marked copies from the unmarked ones. Of all the good ones, I will stroke each lovingly, perhaps give them a little kiss, before they get boxed up again and begin their journeys (hopefully) Australia-wide.

Some might question why I’m admitting this here, and the truth is I’ve always been open and honest about this project - the good and the bad parts - and seeing as I’m doing an author talk about it next month and will be discussing this hiccup there, I don’t see why I can’t here.

Look, these things happen: even so, I’ve spent a lot the past 48 hours drafting outraged and frustrated emails in my head (and I think I had a right to, because this is such a crucial project to me.) I have budgeted for every single one of those books to be perfect. I can’t afford returns due to damage. I don’t want to. It reeks of amateurism and is embarrassing. It’s not like I’m a massive publishing house who can write off damages on the accounts book as ‘whoopsies’ and that said I bet they don’t like doing it either.

Anyway, at this point I can be glad it was picked up and that a plan’s been made. Once it’s over I will dust off my hands and say, “Next challenge, please!”

Which will be book launch. And I haven’t even started thinking about it yet.