Exciting News – If I Should Die

Have you ever had a secret? Have you ever known something great has happened but you don’t want to jinx it by saying something too soon? Have you ever waited to tell some news because you hadn’t told your friends?

I am waiting to post this because I want the news to fall on a Wednesday when I drop into The Writer’s Chat Room. The folks at TWC are filled with consolation and celebration. They can make an ordinary form rejection into something worth bragging about. If any of you are writers, you know what I mean.

I’ve been writing since, wait, I’m not going to tell you how long I’ve been practicing the art and craft of putting words on paper. I even wrote during the days I don’t remember. My sister sent me a hand printed script I wrote in college. It is my handwriting so I know I wrote it but can’t recall the act.

After college and motherhood, barely into my second baby, I started taking writing courses. I was at real risk for becoming a professional student. I haunted online critique groups and various chat rooms where the topic was, you guessed it. My second baby is fifteen, now.

I have written a lot of short fiction, essays, a few poems, and magazine articles and at last count, I think I had five books in various places around the house and in several computers that lay dead in corners of the basement. I always worried about how I would manage being a Mom and married and being a Novelist with a real published book to market. So, I submitted things and worried. Am I really ready if an agent or Publisher accepts my work?

Do I understand the market well enough to help promote what I write? Do I have a clue about how to make a book-signing look like fun? What if? Can fear of success really hold someone back?

My daughter began her family nine years ago and my son is marking the calendar in anticipation of his sixteenth birthday and my darling husband seems capable of remaining alive as long as I keep track of the bills, so this news comes at just the right time.

What the heck is the news? Most of you have already guessed it. Yes, it is Wednesday.

Okay, alright, Eternal Press, a division of Damnation Books, asked to read a novel I wrote called If I Should Die. Late last week, they sent me a contract. The title is on the release schedule for November 2010. I can hardly wait to get into the editing process. I wonder what the cover art will be.

I will be blogging news as it happens, never fear though, life goes on and I’ll be here again. Life is a Story.