I’m guessing if you’ve read here more than
twice you’ve probably realized that the thing I like second only to spanking is
writing. There was a gap in my writing. It stretched from the time of my last
college assignment until I was forty-nine and suddenly found
something I wanted to write about. I found Bonnie’s blog, found my ‘people’ and
immediately wanted to tell Cassie’s stories. They had been in my head so
long. As a teenager all the way through
my forties, I ‘allowed’ myself to daydream with the excuse, ‘maybe I’ll turn
all this into a book some day.’
I guess today is ‘someday’.
The fine people at Lazy Day Publishing accepted
my first Cassie book for publication. It’s been a long time in coming. I could
date it back forty-five years to when Cassie first came into my head, seven
years ago I began her blog, three years ago I put the first stories together
for a real book, and then for the last two months, with the suggestions and
help of so many friends, I got it ready to send off to a real publisher. Well almost ready…
If anyone what’s to know the true identity of
Ana, of GoverningAna, I have her fingerprints – they’re all over my back! Yes I
was ‘almost’ ready to send it, but she most definitely shoved me over the
cliff, and I thank her most sincerely.
As soon as I hit send that afternoon I sat here
and cried. I had a similar fear to what I had when I sent the children off to
school. I knew my children were prepared and could call if they needed me. Not
so Cassie, what if they didn’t understand her, what if they didn’t like her or
Tom or Sue or… But I guess they did.
I don’t know exactly what all happens now, but
I’m very excited and anxious to find
out. The expected release date is December and I won’t be talking about it much
out here until it get’s closer – but trust me, when it comes out you’ll know.
Oh boy, will you know.
This whole process, which is really just
getting started, has all ready given me two surprises. The first, no book will ever really be ‘ready’. You will never be able to read
your work with out finding an error or something that you’d like to change just
a tiny bit. I’ve had advice and suggestion from so many people and each one
made the book better – I won’t list them because I would miss some, but I will
tell you Bas’ suggestions really helped to get the first chapter pointing in
the right direction and I thank him for that.
My second big surprise? Many of you know that I always wanted Cassie
to be a series. In my mind I was hoping
for maybe four or even five books. Last night I began
in roughest form to see how much material I had, stories wise, knowing many would
be discarded and other expanded as well as new material. I
broke them up into bookish length. So how many do I have - between eight and ten! I was shocked. I wouldn’t
tell LazyDay that right now, don’t want to scare them off. Can you imagine the
amount of work it takes to rewrite and smooth these stories into real
books? It’s an enormous amount – and
I’ve never looked forward to anything more in my life!
Just had to share my news!
