The email was buried among the rest of the “I need support” or “You’ve just won!” emails of every day life.  But it was the message I’d been looking forward to for some time.  My contract with Five Star publishing!  It is hard to sit down and write even this blog, when all I want to do is touch the printed pages over and over, prove to myself they really arrived.

I have wanted to be a published author for much of my life, and imagined how this would happen in so many different ways.  Do you remember the scene in the original “Little Women” when, unexpectedly, Jo opens a package and nestled inside is her book, “My Beth?” I cried over that. Or how about Mrs. Muir in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” where Rex Harrison dictates his salty sea stories to Gene Tierney? Writing was so romantic and easy!

Publishing doesn’t work quite so ethereally. Putting the words on paper that tell your tale is a struggle in itself. Then several critiques, rewrites and rejections later, a note that says the book has been authorized for purchase by the publisher, but hold off telling a lot of people until the offer comes in.  Waiting, waiting and anticipation.

I swear I earned at least three more wrinkles in this waiting period. Then, just like with producing the original draft of Faith On The Rocks, I received a draft of a contract, asked questions, made agreements and waited, waited, waited.

Then yesterday, all the official paperwork arrived.

This morning I read through the documents once more, signed on the dotted line and sent off electronic versions of what the publisher needed to see.  In a few minutes I will head off to Chatfield with Prophet, then stop by my UPS store on the way home and send off the originals.

Will I be published within a few weeks?  Nope. Publishing has a more determined schedule of activities that I’m not familiar with yet, but as I travel this road, I’ll keep you updated.

For now, all we have to do is wait.