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June 17, 2005

Roller coasters and spoiled food

From Alesia, refrigerator-less

I’ve had one of those “Good news, Bad news” kind of weeks. The ones where you feel like your eyeballs are going to burst from the sheer velocity of the ups and downs. A lot of it has to do with the limbo/uncertainty of any Navy move. We now know what date our furniture is being packed out, but still don’t have an actual HOUSE to move into in Norfolk.

Right. I’m so not kidding.

In other excitement, Navy Guy took a couple of days off so we could do vacation-y things, to have fun with the kidlets and celebrate my book being done. Naturally, sometime while we were gone the first day, the refrigerator died. As we spent an hour or two throwing out everything in the fridge and freezer the next morning, I received one of the best reviews I’ve ever had for my July book, NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST! (This, as you can imagine, helped the pain of tossing a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of food!). Next, I found out that AMERICAN IDLE won an award! Finally, I had a chat with my darling editor, who told me that she loved my novella! By that time, I was humming while I tossed potentially death-dealing mayonnaise and possibly salmonella-breeding yogurt.

Then fridge repair dude called to say he couldn’t get here until Friday. Minor setback; get a cooler and ice, right? Then I find out my hideously ugly car needs some work. No problem. These things happen. BECAUSE, that very day, a reader -- the lovely Kathryn K. in DC -- wrote to me to tell me that, when she was recommending AMERICAN IDLE to a colleague, she decided she had to read it again, and IT KEPT HER AWAKE SO LATE that night that SHE OVERSLEPT AND WAS LATE TO WORK THE NEXT MORNING!!!! This is the most amazing compliment you can give a writer, in my opinion -- that the book made you lose sleep. But on the second reading? I have framed this letter and will look at it whenever I'm on the bottom swing of the roller coaster - wondering if I were completely insane to give up practicing law to do this author thing.

The moral of my story: Spoiled food is no problem when you’re on the top of the roller coaster. And, hey! Who needs a refrigerator?? I don’t even have a HOUSE TO PUT IT IN!!!

Hugs,
Alesia, the refrigerator-less and soon to be homeless but award-winning author :)

Posted by Alesia at 10:55 AM