The Call!

May 12, 2012

On Tues morning, I got up early to write before work and did a quick check of email while making my tea. Megan, the editor I’ve been working with in London, had a subject line “phone call.’ My hand immediately began to shake. She asked if she could call me this morning. I wrote and erased about ten responses, finally said, “Of course.” Then she emailed back and said, “Now? Could you send me your number?”

She called and offered me a two-book contract with Harlequin Presents, one the book I had just sent in (for the millionth time of revisions.) The other for a to-be-decided story I haven’t even pitched yet. The first will come out Jan 2013, the other later next year. She asked me to send her several pitches for the next book so we could talk about my direction into the future.

I got off the phone and screamed at my daughter, who was leaving for fitness, waking my son in the process and told them that I’d finally gotten The Call. “That’s nice. What call?” Once I explained that the nice people at Harlequin were going to print my story and put it in the stores and even give me money, they were suitably impressed.

I sent out a few quick emails, then got ready for work. I very much wanted to call in drunk, but with a new factory manager having started the day before and my entire job scope changed, office, everything, I really needed to be there. Doug came home from his night shift as I was putting my shoes on. I said, “London Called.” He perked up. “London?” I said, “It was The Call.” That’s when I started to tear up.

But I had to go to work and he had to sleep! I came home with my own party in a grocery bag. My parents came over, we face-timed to sister in Oz, I talked to the one on the coast… Drank champagne 🙂 It was brilliant and then I got up the next morning to take a hard look at the last ‘little tweak’ revisions and began to hyperventilate.

I’ve since got a handle on them and hope to have them done tonight or tomorrow morning. Thursday was an early day (daughter to fitness, my turn to drive, so into work at 6:30.) Just when I thought I could skate through Friday, my son announced he had to be at the school for 6:20am for rugby. So I put in another 9 hr day there again today.

Meanwhile, the contract has arrived with the request for a bio and about a gazillion excited emails I haven’t answered. I didn’t know I still had this many friends since all I’ve done for the last six years is work and write. Some are asking if I’m tired of talking about it. I wish! I honestly have not taken a breath to really bask in this.

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