Huge Ego Boost and Publisher's Lunch

Had a lovely lift this morning, receiving an e-mail from one of my favorite authors, Lesley Kagen. Her first novel, Whistling in the Dark, is one of my very favorites (it’s listed among my favorite books on my HarperCollins site and it’s the book I most frequently recommend to book clubs I visit). I was incredibly honored to be asked to provide a blurb for her next book. Honored, and well, a little bit greedily excited that I’ll get to read the book way early instead of waiting for the publication date! Woo hoo!

Lesley had seen my new deal on Publisher’s Lunch. That’s always such a thrill, seeing your work listed there among everyone else’s—sometimes right there with the big names. It’s one of those startling, satisfying moments of recognizing, “I am really doing this.” The deal report is brief but still worthy of flutters:

"Among yesterday's 20 new deals: Film rights to Edgar Sawtelle to Universal and Tom Hank's Playtone; TV rights to MJ Rose's The Reincarnationist to Warner Bros. as a pilot for Fox; Katrina Kittle's MARRIAGE ADVICE FROM THE CHURCH OF ST. EQUINE to Harper; a book about the Tampa Bay Rays for ESPN Books; Biggest Loser runner-up Julie Hadden's Fat Chance: How God Changed My Life Through Reality TV, to Guideposts; and more.


THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS author Katrina Kittle's MARRIAGE ADVICE FROM THE CHURCH OF ST. EQUINE, in which a veterinarian and mother spends her first post-divorce year surrounded by a motley crew of animals who teach her about forgiveness, healing, and love as she examines the meaning of marriage while her teenaged daughter's romance develops its own complications, to Claire Wachtel at Harper by Lisa Bankoff at ICM.”

There it is...six years, a new job, a divorce, countless moves, and now another new job later...the book is finally a book.

I think that calls for a latte at Gorilla Coffee!