Big News and Bad Impressions
My first novel hits the market today!
I’m sitting on the couch, a couple of dogs warming my feet. In a few minutes, I’ll get up to feed them for the night and start getting ready for bed. First, I grab my phone to check my email.
“Congratulations, your book The Girl in the Rusted Cage is now available,” I read. My brain stutters. My book is now available? MY BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE!
I turn to Chris, my eyes wide. “WOOOO!” I scream in my best Ric Flair impression.
“ARROOOO,” howls a now wide-awake dog. I hand my husband the phone, displaying the book cover that bears my name, now for sale on Amazon.
“I did it,” I say quietly, tears in my eyes. “I did it, Chris.”
He knows the story better than anyone. I wrote the first chapter in 2006 as a newly single mom barely making bills in a ramshackle rental. For almost two decades, it went unfinished inside a desk drawer, then a file cabinet, and later a moving box. He has witnessed the cycle of me taking out the worn pages, re-reading them, and then getting scared and stashing them away for “one day.” He’s been the tired participant for many long, tearful talks about whether or not to share my story with the world and my partner in conquering the fear of what others might think. Then, he shared in the kamikaze sprint to finish the book once and for all before all my “some days” turned into “nevers.”
“Knock, knock,” he asks me suddenly, jolting me from my reverie.
I frown. Didn’t he hear me? Doesn’t he know what this means? How can he be so rudely flippant? I sit silently, glaring at him.
“KNOCK. KNOCK,” he insists once more in a demanding voice.
“Fine, dear. Who’s there?”
“A published author’s husband, that’s who!” he shouts in glee. “WOOOO!” he adds as he high fives me and I burst into crazed giggles.
In other news, my novel The Girl in the Rusted Cage is now available on Amazon in paperback and hardcover, on Kindle, and FREE on Kindle Unlimited here.
Ric Flair said it best, ya’ll. WOOOO!
