I Have a Book Deal!

I’ve been sitting on this news for one long month, waiting until I could shout it from the rooftops, and now I can! I have a book deal! I have a book deal! And I don’t care who knows it!

It all seems incredibly, effervescently fast–like champagne–and this part of my journey has been a whirlwind of sparks and fizz and magic, but lest I get carried away by the excitement and bubbliness of it all, I try to remind myself that all of this wonderful madness is a fragment of a much longer journey. The past decade has included four years of undergraduate work, two years of graduate work, six years trying to get my short stories published in literary magazines (38 rejections, 6 stories published), a four-year detour into teaching, eighteen months and thirty-four drafts, and now, a deal.

​The road has been filled with twists and turns and uphill slogs, with folks who rejected me over and over and folks who helped me along the way, and more than anything else, I’m grateful for the opportunity to keep writing, to keep doing what I love, to keep trekking. Thank you to my dragon-riding agent-warrior Barbara Poelle, my delightful new editor Stacey Barney and the lovely Kate Meltzer, and everyone else at Putnam who’s given me their enthusiasm and support. Let’s do this! The rest of the journey awaits.