So This Is How It Feels!?!
When Preorders Go Live!
When It All Happens At Once…
After months of waiting, not knowing when it would happen, someone clicked on the power button for the get-this-book-published conveyor belt. Preorders for my book went live!
Then my first pages arrived in my inbox! Days later, my back cover copy showed up, then my second pages, followed by full ARC cover proofs. 🌪️ Proofreading, comments, emails crisscrossed with immediacy.
Materials for my publicist were due, same for a masterclass for my WIP (why’d I do that to myself right now?). And then it was done. I’d approved it all. Soon, the printed Advance Reader Copies will arrive and there will only be a million and two exciting things I’ll have to think about for that! But for now, all is right with the world. Or is it?
I’m out-of-office kicking myself in the butt. Please leave your message at the beep…
On To Mother’s Day 💐
In mastering Mother’s Day, Hallmark shows us the many ways a person can be a mother: You can find cards for your mother, your stepmother, your moms, your bonus mom, your surrogate mother, your like-a-mom-to-me, your mother figure, your I-wish-you-were-my-mother.
Using the Hallmark name as a generalization, the way Kleenex means any brand of tissue.
How we define family is a topic that plays a major role in my writing. My debut, Not Yours to Keep, explores this through adoption and infertility, and asks what lengths would we go to be a mother? In my current WIP, it’s through the eyes of a woman who’d do anything to protect her children from their greedy, gaslighting father. Both stories take a deep dive into how the choices our mothers or grandmothers made affect future generations. It’s a fascinating, thought-provoking study to uncover how our paths were determined by past generations; how the way our relationship with our mothers and the way they raised us (or didn’t) determine the people we choose and the relationships we have with them; not to mention the type of mother we are to our own children.
The focus is on motherhood, but parenthood or fatherhood also apply.
Whether you are a new mother or missing your mom, and whoever the mom in your life has been, remember this—the joys and challenges in the cycles of our relationships with our mothers have shaped who we are today.
For whatever MOTHER’S DAY means to you, and however you choose to spend your Sunday, may you have a beautiful day.
Read It:
Laurie Frankel is a new to me author. I took an interest in her and her latest book Family Family, because, while her role in adoption differed from mine, her motivation for writing it is very similar to why I wrote Not Yours to Keep.
In Family Family, Frankel showcases her characters with a unique narrative in this fun, emotional, full of secrets story.
Family Family FINAL SCORE:
The rating scale: Take the number of days to read, subtract all of life’s responsibilities, obligations, fun, and a few hours of sleep each night, plus some brownie points, and this heartfelt and fun story scores a 2-1/2 day read.
And Now For Something Completely Serious…
Let’s continue, shall we? A year after they found a 3mm too-small-to-worry brain aneurysm in my noggin, I had to have an MRA. An MRA is imaging that focuses on the blood vessels and surrounding tissue instead of an MRI, which shows organs and tissues. MRA is a much more accurate image for detecting brain aneurysms. The result? My itsy 3mm was now a 4, which according to the original barometer, was still not a concern. That it grew a mm in a year was.
You may recall that besides size, the aneurysm shape is significant. A smooth balloon appearance, which the neurosurgeon believed I had, is a better scenario than a malformed one. The only way to know what it looked like for sure was to have an angiogram. But the neurosurgeon wasn’t worried. He suggested we reevaluate the following year. Or, in New York terms “Fuhgeddaboudit.” What I heard: that growing, possibly volatile bomb in your brain is no big deal, so go forth and live your life.
Fat chance. I sought a second opinion. The new neurosurgeon illuminated the scans on the view box. Able to recognize the notorious bulge inside the intricate web of lines by now, I pointed to a shadow on my “balloon.” “What’s that?” I asked.
The essential answer from the very chill doctor was: could be nothing, could be something, only an angiogram could say for sure. But… (UGH, no buts!) add my age (56) and pre-existing medical conditions to the equations, doc number 2 was confident the aneurysm would inevitably grow and require surgery. He encouraged me to schedule that dang angiogram procedure as soon as possible. I was probably in some understandable state of shock and denial, or maybe I’m a lunatic with skewed priorities, but I was in the middle of a fabulous complete your novel workshop, and lest I died, or lived but wasn’t myself, I refused to have the angiogram before my book was done.
Stay tuned for how to prepare for potential mortality…
Last Licks
Love the post and Lucille and Ethel in the candy factory. They sum up how I feel many days.
Zelly! Don't scare us like that and leave us hanging....of course, I'm guessing you've scared yourself more...know that I'll do whatever to help, not that I am very helpful from this distance, but I'm always here to listen. And read your book and tell you how wonderful it is.