The Nerves

If The Joy is the glowing candlelight of release season, The Nerves are the fluttering shadows dancing just behind it — the ones that gather in the old corners of Bridgeport, rustling like whispers through the town square just after dusk. You don’t invite them. They appear anyway, slipping in during quiet moments, drifting through like mist curling around the lampposts outside Strange Finds.

They settle in right before you fall asleep.

Right after you send out ARCs.

When you’re staring at your draft thinking, Is this good enough? Am I good enough?

Publishing a book is a strange kind of vulnerability — a magic circle you step into willingly. You’ve lived inside this story, protected it, nurtured it, revised it until you could recite whole chapters the way townsfolk recite Bridgeport legends. For months — sometimes years — your book belongs solely to you.

And then suddenly, it doesn’t.

It becomes a doorway.

And other people walk through.

Soon, readers will enter the world you created. They’ll wander your haunted alleys, fall for your flawed heroes, raise eyebrows at your plot twists, and maybe even stay up too late because the atmosphere wrapped its fingers around them. They’ll make the story theirs — interpreting it, questioning it, feeling something because of it… or not because of it. And that uncertainty can feel enormous, like standing at the top of Bridgeport’s old clocktower and realizing exactly how far you could fall.

Will readers connect with the characters you love so fiercely?

Will they notice the subtle foreshadowing you tucked into scenes like the town’s hidden wards?

Will the plot twist land the way it echoed in your mind?

Will your heart — disguised as a novel — be held gently?

Even the most seasoned authors feel it: that tender ache of letting go, that soft tremor under the ribs. No one is immune. Not even in Bridgeport, where courage and fear often hold hands.

But here’s the truth —

Nerves aren’t a sign you’re unprepared.

They’re proof that you care. Deeply. Honestly.

They’re evidence that something in this story matters to you in a way that still makes your pulse quicken.

And in their own way, The Nerves are a kind of magic, too.

They mean you’re stepping into the unknown.

They mean you’re risking something real.

They mean you’re doing something brave.

And bravery — quiet, trembling, beautiful bravery — is the pulse of every story worth telling.