by hatfield13

Now it feels real

I left home just after 4:30 yesterday morning to catch a train into Manhattan on one of the muggiest, steamiest days of the year. 

Whatever would possess me to leave the lake on such a day?

I had a noon lunch date and editorial meeting with my editor for Marty McGuire, Frog Princess.  I was an hour early because I fully expected to get lost  and end up wandering around Brooklyn when I changed trains on the subway.  I didn’t, though, which left me some time to explore the neighborhood and the Scholastic Store.  I’m sure the sales people thought I was a little crazy because I couldn’t stop smiling, looking at so many of my favorite books and imagining Marty among them in 2010.

I recognized my new editor as soon as she came into the lobby (Google Image Search is a many splendored thing).  She is as marvelous in person as I knew she’d be, and she has great ideas for how to make Marty a stronger, funnier story.  We agreed on all the most important issues — character development, plot elements, and dessert.

They called this gooey wonder S’mores.  It was a graham cracker with a brownie on top and a torched marshmallow on top of that.  That’s homemade chocolate malt ice cream on the side.  I traveled home high on sugar and book talk and arrived back on Lake Champlain well after midnight a very tired but very happy writer.

17 Replies on “Now it feels real”

  7. Love this post! Although I’m ashamed with myself that the only book I could recognise in your picture of the books inside the store was HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS! *headdesk*

    You know, I had this interesting feeling as I was reading this, that your writing career has kind of taken off like a train … rolling out of the station, making stops here and there to promote SPITFIRE (although that’s not really ‘stopping’), speeding up as you get an agent … and for some reason, I got a sense of the train speeding up even more–and hitting more stops–as I read this post. In a good way. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I love when people share what they were thinking as they read my posts, so … yeah. There you go. 🙂

  12. Thanks, Jo! Were your ears ringing yesterday? We were talking about common writing friends, and Kara remembered meeting you at BEA last year.

  13. Dreamy is a perfect word to describe it. I had some time to wander around after my meeting and just kept grinning from ear to ear.