Letter to the early reader

Dear early reader,

You found this while the shelf was still mostly empty.

There were no years of reviews waiting to reassure you. No long backlist. No neat story about how everything came together.

There was a book, a name you may not have known yet, and whatever made you stop.

Thank you for stopping.

A first book lives with its writer for so long that publication can feel strangely quiet. The file is submitted. The page appears. Somewhere, a person I have never met opens it.

That last part still catches me.

For years, the words existed close to me. They were changed, moved, cut and read again. I knew where every sentence had been difficult. I knew which chapters had followed me into ordinary days.

Then the book became yours.

You could underline a sentence I nearly removed.

You could disagree with the page I had been most certain about.

You could close it halfway through and return months later with a different life around you.

That is the part no writer controls, and I am glad.

Books need privacy after they leave us. They need room to become useful in ways the writer did not plan.

You may have come to Why We Do That because you were trying to understand someone else. Most of us begin there. Another person’s silence, defensiveness, perfectionism or need to be needed can be easier to see than our own.

Then a page turns slightly.

The person under observation starts to look familiar.

I hope the book met that moment gently.

The work behind these books begins with a simple belief. Behaviour becomes easier to understand when we stop rushing to the easiest explanation.

That does not excuse harm.

It gives us a more accurate place to stand.

You were one of the first people willing to stand there with me.

I do not know where you read the book. Maybe on a phone between tasks. Maybe in bed. Maybe with a pen nearby. Maybe you bought it and have not opened it yet.

You still count as part of the beginning.

A shelf is built one reader at a time. The early ones make it feel possible before there is much evidence.

Thank you for being here before the evidence piled up.

Warmly,

Karmin