Feeling Like the Real Deal

IT TOOK ME NEARLY TEN YEARS from the day I decided to really write a novel to the day I got a book deal, the book deal not being for the novel I initially wrote, OR the one after that, but for my Young Adult novel, The Pull of Gravity, I started (and finished) in between.

Maybe the length (and intensity) of the journey, and the fact that I still have eleven months before the book comes out, both make the fact of my book deal still feel unreal.

Which is why it is nice, along the way, to have those moments where I say, "okay, yes, this is really happening... finally."

Of course, the first was sitting in my editor, the legendary and wonderful Frances Foster's, small office in the flatiron building surrounded by "her" books, notably the fantastic Holes (!) by Louis Sachar and so many gorgeous and amazing picture books by Peter Sis.

Another, of course, was receiving a check in the mail from Macmillan (the umbrella publisher that my imprint, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is under).

Another recent one was receiving some questions from copyediting about some of the smaller details in my book.

And, today, a new milestone, my author website is up, coordinated with the new look of my blog, all done by the really wonderful and amazing Kitty Meade of Ink2Art http://ink2art.com/.

So, one step at a time, I'm becoming the real deal. Whatever the real deal is.