Surreal Moment – October 20, 2016
Fly the Point. Draper, Utah.
I’m reading through the Swanky Seventeens Facebook group where one of the author’s mentioned she just found her book up on Amazon. So I click over to Amazon and type in The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan – because why not? AND IT’S THERE. With my name and a bio I don’t remember writing and a PUBLICATION DATE and a PREORDER LINK.
PEOPLE CAN ORDER MY BOOK you all!
A thought that immediately makes me feel like throwing up.
Surreal Moment – October 15, 2016
Women Writing the West Conference. Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I am standing outside the door of a hotel conference room having an *actual conversation with TWO New York Times Best Selling Authors about cover art – theirs and MINE.
*Note to readers: an actual conversation means I’m an active participant. I’m not just standing silently, smiling and nodding. I’m saying real things that make other people nod and smile and say real things back. Un-freaking-real, right?!
Still, you’re expected to be a professional. To hold up your end of the deal. Your part of the conversation or presentation or panel discussion. To simply do the work. So that’s what you do, and you do it all perfectly normally and appropriately. Or at least you seem to. Because inside – another part of you – a much more real part of you – is jumping up and down, screeching and poking you in the ribs. “Can you believe this?!” this part is screaming. “Are you paying attention?!” “Is this really freaking happening?!”
I had one such experience at a conference I was at recently. A part of me was chatting and talking and nodding along – making perfect sense, while the rest of me was floating above the room trying to take a mental picture of what was happening so I could treasure it forever. Which is why I’ve decided to start recording these events here on my blog, in a little series I’m going to call Surreal Moments in a Debut Author’s Life. That way all those little “Oh my God this is really happening” moments can have a place to express themselves and their excitement as inappropriately and unprofessionally as they want.
Because, let’s face it, I’ve never been terribly cool – and I really don’t think that’s suddenly going to change now.
