Livin’ the Dream

If you read my blog regularly, then you know that after precisely fifty-four bazillion rewrites, my second middle grade novel, Lula Bell on Geekdom, Freakdom & the Challenges of Bad Hair, FINALLY found a publishing home – yippeeee!

What you probably don’t know is that more than one publishing house offered Lula Bell…a home – and I am so grateful to each and every one of them. That said, multiple offers do slow the process down, as each offer must be carefully considered – there’s a lot more than money to consider – trying to find the right long-term editor is like trying to find the right guy! Luckily, my wonderful literary agent, Emily van Beek, knew exactly how to handle things, and she did – beautifully.

So there wasn’t much for me to do except wait. I am a terrible, terrible waiter. I worry. I doubt. I begin to think things like, All of these editors are going to come to their senses and realize that I would do this work for free, that I have been doing this work for free, just for fun, and then they’re all going to take their offers and go home – and my literary agent, not to mention my family, is going to be sooo disappointed! That’s what I really thought. But there just wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Even so, I had to do something.

So, I scrubbed our kitchen from top to bottom,

(Look, Mom! No crumbs!)

cleaned out the refrig and the oven,

reorganized our gift-wrapping stuff,

(Yes, that is used tissue paper. I am both neat AND cheap!)

reorganized my closet by both color AND season,

(OCD much?)

and made a meatloaf – and I don’t even like meatloaf – still. (Face it: Meatloaf’s not much to look at… or to eat, come to think of it.)

Finally, my daughter said to me, “Gosh, Mama, is this how you celebrate?” That’s right: I’m livin’ the dream, baby! I’m livin’ the dream!

May you find yourself livin’ the dream, too – and may it involve absolutely no cleaning and no meatloaf whatsoever!

I’m actually looking forward to more rewrites now – and we’ll eat out!