Oh my Gawd!

Today is a beautiful fall day and I am sitting in my favourite hole in the wall coffee shop, enjoying a tea. I do love the smell of coffee, it evokes such positive, warm, feelings, but I’ll be honest when I say I cannot stand the taste of the stuff. Makes me want to vomit – no matter how much milk and sugar I add. So I stick to my tea and pretend I am sophisticated, AKA adult, enough to drink a cup of Joe. I watch as the leaves change colours and while I love the look of this season, I hate knowing that winter is merely minutes away. I fully admit to being a summer girl, basking in the sun, never cold just breathing. But the wheel of time moves on whether I wish it to or not.

As October speeds along, things for me are just getting more and more real. Only seventeen days until the official release of Supernaturally Yours. (Which by the way is available for preorder in eBook format on www.musapublishing.com – here’s the direct link . My nerves are a little ruined; I am still in a total state of shock.

I was doing up posters for the novel when I thought I’d better put a web address on them, so I faithfully went to my publishers website (just to make sure I had typed it in right) and while there I thought “What the hell, let’s put my name in the search bar.” Just for (as my mother used to say) ‘shits and giggles’ and lo to my surprise the cover pops up. Along with my blurb, excerpt and link to the book trailer. There was also a little red button for “buy now”. I nearly peed my pants. Quite honestly I screeched (and for those of you who know me, know I NEVER screech). It was an honest “Oh my god.” Moment. (which I said at least four times – each progressively screechier. There it was. My book. My love, my soul, my brain child, bane of my existence, my focus for the last two years. RIGHT THERE! I don’t think I will ever have a moment like that again in my life. I immediately called Mr. Gloria at work (pulling him from a meeting – but OH MY GOD!!) I screeched at him and freaked out a bit. Okay a lot. But it’s all new for me, I’m allowed. I am trying to find the words to express my emotions in that moment. Overwhelming happiness, disbelief, pride, fear, anxiety and joy all rolled up into a big old ball of “oh, my GAWD!”

I guess I am still in that stage of being unable to believe it is happening. I keep expecting the publisher to turn around and go “oops, sorry. We made a mistake.” Or “Bazinga! Fooled ya!” Not that I don’t think Supernaturally Yours is a great book, I do. It’s just this shit doesn’t happen to me.

Although I seem to be the only one with these secret doubts hiding inside me. I was talking to Mr. Gloria about it and he says. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” When I asked him what he meant by that he clarified, that he’d always known he would see my work published somewhere. From the time he read the first poem I ever shared with him he saw something in me that would be more. He said that he knew how special I was and that the world would discover it as soon as I let them see it, instead of hiding the real me behind a mask of normalcy. - As if he wasn’t sweet enough without all the honeyed words, then he has to go and say things that almost make me cry. Bastard. But a really great bastard nonetheless.

I was kinda shocked by his admission, for a few reasons. First, I never saw anything special in me, I am just me. Second, that the bugger has known I could do so much more, and in the twenty years we’ve been together he never told me to get off my ass and do it. Third, that he could have such faith in me is truly humbling.

So I sit in my coffee shop, almost drinking coffee and going over all the ways my life has changed. Wait that’s not right my life hasn’t changed, I have. I am learning to accept me and love myself and believe in myself and maybe that is where the difference is. I like the person I am, a year or two ago I would have hidden from myself, behind a wall of everyday mom, instead of embracing the wookie wearing scooter riding freak that I am. I would never have believed that I deserved any of this. The fact that the world will soon be able to read my work (which is like reading inside my brain, my mind, my soul) is terrifying to me but I’m not afraid of it. Sounds like a weird sentiment, but I’m terrified of putting myself out there to be ridiculed, to be thought of as ‘less than’ but I am also not afraid. I know this is the path I am meant to take, the one I have to take. This is where I was meant to be. I only shake my head at how long it took me to get here.