guess what?

Some days, in the imagined scenario, I would scream with excitement. Picture Will Ferrell in Elf when he learns that Santa is coming. Other days, I imagined, I might sit down in relief. Like Ed Harris in Apollo 13 when he hears Tom Hanks’ voice after 6 minutes of blackout.

In actuality, when I signed the contract in early January for my novel Tidal Flats to be published by Yellow Pear Press, I just smiled.

And then I did the happy dance–all by myself in Provincetown.

I wanted to tell Cal first and I wanted to tell him in person and I wasn’t going home for almost two weeks. So… I got to work on edits.

That’s actually what sold me on the small, independent California press–edits. Yellow Pear Press’s editor Lisa McGuinness had three main suggestions after reading the manuscript in late November. And I agreed with ALL.

Of course, it didn’t hurt when she mentioned publication in the fall of 2019. (Yay!)

December was the contract. January and February were edits. On Friday, March 1st, the manuscript went to the copyeditor. Isn’t it awesome to hear those words?

A lot of you know that I’ve been writing for a long time, and that I’ve been working on this particular novel since January of 2013. You know I’ve tried different openings, that I’ve abandoned entire sections, that I’ve jumped without any idea where I would land. I kept at it, as Elizabeth Strout wrote, “long past the point where it made sense.”

And yet, here we are–later this year, there will be a real book–hooray!