I got a little derailed by Christmas and lots of snow…but used January to read through and edit the whole book, twice! Finally I had a review draft ready to send to my volunteer readers/editors. Which meant I began to print the end of January.

I have spent almost three years writing and six to nine months before that researching and deciding I would write. I have read and reread chapters, rewritten some of them of them pretty seriously, done more research, edited and edited again and again. I thought I celebrated when I actually believed the book was ‘done.’ But I was not prepared for what it felt like to have a completed copy of the entire book in my hands. The closest that I have been able to describe it, is that it felt like it did when after nine months of pregnancy (and the kicks and sleepless night and equipping a nursery, etc to make it real), they handed my first baby to me. The reality of the ‘pregnancy’ was swept away by the living presence of my son. To hold the manuscript of The Call made my heart flutter, my pulses race, and the tears rush to my eyes (OK, like Lis, my heroine, I held them off.) It was amazing. I truly felt awesome. Not the awesome we blithely say all the time, but awe filled. Actual breath taking feelings in my chest.

If now or later any fledgling writer ever reads this I want to say…despite all that it took to get here, this is worth it. Sometimes it felt like I would write and write and never be done, never have something that felt finished, or good. I slogged through at times when I was stuck and couldn’t find the bridge between chapters, or events or between where a character was and where I wanted them to be. I am so glad to be here, so glad I kept on writing even when I couldn’t see myself getting to where I am today. That despite job pressures, family ‘stuff’, I kept at it. The reality of having done it, held it, is overwhelmingly better than I imagined. Keep at it….you will be overjoyed that you did!