Giving birth in back-to-back months
If you are considering writing a book, let me give you one piece of guidance. It’s best not to try and bring a child and a book into this world in back-to-back months.
My wife, Staci, and I brought home our daughter Marit Evelyn from the hospital today. She was born Friday, August 1 by scheduled C-section. Marit weighed only 5 pounds, 2 ounces and measured 18 inches long. Everyone is doing well, including our son, Mac, who at 3 and change, already likes the role of big brother. Now that we have each gender covered, I predict I will have the opportunity to experience watching boys’ and girls’ basketball from Parents Row during the next decade.
Watching your wife give birth to a child can be stressful. Trying to “give birth” to a book at the same time ratchets up the pressure. The one remaining “loose end” that was preventing me from sending BasketCases to the printer was the lawyers from the NBA who had concerns with some wording from Kenny Mauer’s foreword (and, obviously, controlled the trademark on the NBA, which I needed to receive permission to use or risk getting sued). In fact, I took a call only minutes before my wife went into the operating room. It was Kenny, who gave me an update that he had done everything he could from his standpoint to try and move the process along, but had not heard back from his colleagues.
This was discouraging because Kenny was scheduled to leave the country on Monday and would be unavailable by e-mail or cell phone. Without Kenny available, the book could have gotten delayed by at least two weeks. Fortunately, Kenny received an e-mail on Saturday and we were able to agree to a tentative new version of the foreword with the NBA’s attorneys. (This request went literally to the highest levels of the NBA, this side of David Stern).
A couple of hours after bringing home Miss Marit today, I received an e-mail that the NBA gave its approval to the new foreword. What that means, if all goes well, is that BasketCases will go to the printer this week and should be scheduled to roll off the presses by mid-September. I will give you an update as the process moves along, assuming I’m not changing a diaper.