It’s a marvel and it’s marvelous!

Sometimes, I look back at the path that brought me to the decision to publish The Brevity of Roses and marvel. It’s almost as if an outside force took me over. If you had asked me three years ago would I be on the cusp of bona fide authorship, I would have flashed you my sharpest Are-you-crazy? look.

Sure, I made up stories. I’d done that forever. And, in the last twelve years, some of them even birthed into Word files. And sure, I had dreamed about being a novelist—nearly every time I read a book. One completed novel even nestled among those files. But those were just for me.

Then, I had a dream. It was brief and lovely, but it posed a question I wanted to explore. I couldn’t quit thinking about it. I told a friend, who said it would make a good story. So, I embellished and wrote it as a short story. Not satisfied, I expanded it to a novella. And then, I kept writing.

I could have left it safe in its own little Word folder, my second completed novel, but I didn’t. There was something different about this one. I didn’t want to keep it to myself. I thought the story might be one that others would enjoy reading, so I kept working on it. Working, and working, and WORKING.

Yesterday, I worked on formatting the print version. It was a thrill to view the title page and other front matter, and then, on what looks like actual book pages—My Story. I’ve called this a novel for two and a half years, but that was never real to me until now—and it will be even more real soon.

A novel—my novel—is a marvelous thing!

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