Blog Entry: Best Mail Day Ever
Entry posted on July 30, 2010, 3.25 pm
Categories:
A Most Improper Magick, Chocolate, Kat Incorrigible, Photos
Yesterday, my wonderful UK editor, Emma, told me that my author copies would arrive today. Needless to say, I was completely calm and blasé. I went about my business exactly as usual...
Yeah, right. Who am I trying to kid?
Every time I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought: they're coming today! When I woke up this morning, I thought: TODAY! And every time I heard a car outside our house, I twitched as if someone had given me an electric shock.
Still, I had to be productive. Today is the last day of the Clarion West write-a-thon and the day I'd sworn to finally send off Kat Book 3 to my American editor and my agent. So I spent the morning alternating between last-minute small fixes and historical spot-checks...and manic leaps toward the window every time I heard anything that might be a delivery.
The doorbell rang. I was mired down in manuscript paper. Patrick got there first. It was a Tescos deliveryman.
"Um...we didn't order anything," Patrick said.
The deliveryman said, "Someone did!"
And someone had. Tricia Sullivan had sent me six bars of luscious dark chocolate and a bottle of white wine, perfect weapons for fighting the Publication Day Crazy! I laughed and unwrapped a chocolate bar, set the wine in the fridge to chill, and started to chill out a little bit myself.
By noon, I was finished with the final changes to Kat 3 and was staring at the cover page. "But what am I going to call it?"
Patrick and I were both brainstorming titles when there was a knock on the door.
I lunged.
The UPS man was holding two packages: one box from Templar Books - mybooksmybooksmybooks! - and one padded bag from Atheneum Books, which I hadn't been expecting.
Patrick insisted on photographing the entire un-boxing process, which you can see behind the cut.
And, in a total surprise, guess what the Atheneum bag added to the pile? Shiny new ARCs of Kat, Incorrigible!
I honestly never completely believed, throughout this entire process, that it was quite real. That my book really was being published.
But it was. And it has been. And it's a real book!
Half an hour after the grand unboxing, I emailed off Kat Book 3. (Tentatively titled, A Reckless Magick in the UK and Kat, Incorrigible: A Reckless Magic in the US.)
Then Patrick uncracked a bottle of champagne.
A Most Improper Magick is a real, published book. And today was just the most awesome mail day EVER.
