They’re HERE!!!!
The books are here! The glorious, beautiful, amazing, shiny books full of pages and words and pictures. And it only took 8 years for them to get here!!!!
A lot of “important” moments along the way. The initial chat with Lisa, the letters of on-spec revisions, the day it went to committee, the agent-getting, the acceptance, the first round of official edits, the second round, copyediting, last-minute fact checking, blurb hunting, contracts arriving in the mail, checks arriving in the mail, arcs arriving in the mail, the first review, etc. etc. All of them HUGE moments. And with the arrival of each, this feeling of “I’m about to be an author”.
But checks and agents and deals and reviews do NOT make you an author, whatever some people may think.
A BOOK makes you an author!!!
There is something in the actual concreteness of the thing. The THING! It is a thing, not an idea. I had an idea, and I worked at it, and now, 8 years later, the idea has become a thing. An object. It’s an incarnation. It’s CRAZY!
I can wrap it up and give it as a gift. I can burn it for firewood. I can barter it for goods and services. It is a thing. I can touch it.
MY BOOK!!!!!!
(which the boys–THING 1 and THING 2– helped me, joyfully, to unpack. I’m a lucky lady, to have such helpers)