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On Monday I told you how everyone who reads Falling Under wants to talk about The Sex. I think it's fitting, on my final day here at the Penguin blog, to also discuss endings-in particular, endings of books and even more specifically, the ending of my book.

Because, hot on the heals of comments about The Sex, people want to talk about The Ending of Falling Under.

I wrote three other versions of the final few pages of the book, before deciding on the one that finally went to print (which was, by the way, very close to the ending I'd written on the very first draft). I wanted to get it right and I felt I'd built a certain world-view and hopefully a trust with readers, which the wrong ending could ruin or cheapen. I wanted, too, to let my protagonist, Mara, surprise readers the way she so often surprised me as I was writing. I wanted to leave her alive with possibility and with her future in her own hands.

Well...! in addition to strong reactions from people I know personally, here are a few things coming in from reviewers about The Ending:

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Yesterday, it happened. My book was officially released.

It was an interesting, surreal kind of day, especially because I woke up early in order to catch a flight to San Francisco and, just my luck, I couldn't get my internet to work before I left which meant I was unable to obsessively google myself (and the book) until I got to my hotel room many hours later. And even then, I was too busy for much googling and googling is part of what convinces me this is real-that and seeing the book in the store, which I didn't get the chance to do yesterday.

So I kind of floated through the day, wondering if I looked different, if people could "tell" and swinging from intense happiness and the desire to blurt it out to everyone, to gut-gripping terror about what's going to happen-whether people will like it, what they will say and so on. (Go ahead and make the comparison to losing one's virginity-it's there for the taking and entirely apt.)

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The other night, just as I was drifting along in the first stage of sleep, I was jolted awake by a tremendous noise. It sounded like the surface of the earth was being scraped off by a giant shovel or plow, or ripped open by something I couldn't even conceive of.

I clutched at my chest, ran to the window, hyperventilated.

I went to my computer and googled "loud noise in sky over Toronto" but didn't find anything.

Then I had to bite my lip because I was starting to cry.

I was quite sure the world was ending, either from a natural catastrophe or nuclear war, and I wanted to wake up everyone in the house, including (and especially) my two-year-old, and start running, or moving everything to the basement. We were staying overnight at my parent's house and I put my hand out for the phone. My husband was a thirty-minute drive away and if I called him right now he might still have a chance to make it to us. If not...well, I wouldn't go there, he would make it.

I thought through what we would do-whether we would manage to grow our own food, if we would be sick, where we would get the seeds to grow the food, what would happen to my little dog, my family, my friends.

I sat in the dark, just listening and trying to breathe. It was at least fifteen minutes before I was able to calm myself and another three hours before I could get to sleep.

And the noise I heard?

The noise I heard was thunder.

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My book, Falling Under, is being released this week. It's my debut and I have, therefore, been anticipating this for months.

I'm ready for all manner of serious discussion about the book; it's structure, its themes, its use of the very unusual 2nd person point of view and so on. I'm ready to talk about whether it's "literary" or "commercial" (it's both, I think) and I'm ready with my answer to the "is this autobiographical" question.

But as friends and family and strangers (!) start to read Falling Under, there's one thing they all want to talk about...they want to talk about The Sex.

Because, you see, there is a bit of sex in Falling Under-sex of the fiery, emotionally fraught variety.

So everyone (with raised eyebrows and meaningful looks) comments on The Sex, and then they ask the "is this autobiographical" question in regards to The Sex.

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Shortly after I arrived at Camp Mathilda, the northern Kuwait encampment which housed my assigned subject, the Marine Corps' First Reconnaissance battalion, I was told by the commander to hand over my satellite phone. This was a relief. If I had no satellite phone, I would be unable to talk to my editor. My editor wouldn't be able to ask for a story, and I wouldn't have to explain that my computer was broken. I would just take notes, and write the stories when I returned to civilization.

I would spend nearly two months with the battalion. On previous jobs I had always carried either cheapo spiral notebooks purchased from 7/11 or long, thin reporter's notebooks. Sometimes, I carried legal pads. It wasn't until I started writing in Moleskine books--which I had scoffed at as a frilly, overpriced "Frappucino notebooks" when my sister gave them to for Christmas--that I began to notice their advantages. The spiral books would always become crushed when I carried them in my pocket. The spirals would get bent, and the pages would fall out. The Moleskine notebook was stitch-bound, and fairly indestructible, which got high points from me as we crossed the line into Iraq and entered combat.