Jessica Scott's Blog, page 38

The Wait for the End of the War

The colors have been cased in Iraq. The mission is almost over. The last troopers are heading home in a few days time to please Lord, make it home for Christmas. This Christmas, regardless of whether my husband makes it home for the actual day or not, will be extra special for my family. My husband will be home. He will not be going back. It's his turn to watch the next war on TV. He's served and served well, nearly 50 months in combat. He's coming home to two daughters who have grown up largely without him. A bass boat that has sat neglected in the front yard. A cat who will tear him limb from limb and then curl up on his lap. And a faithful old dog who has been the most enthusiastic welcoming committee every single time he's walked through that front door.

 

The war in Iraq is winding down. I started reading through my blog posts from my year there because I'm funny that way. I wanted to remember the year I spent in Mosul, writing and blogging and just fucking grateful that I had a toilet and a real shower. I made it through the year with no camel spiders (thank you sweet newborn baby Jesus). A whole lot of memories rose. Some funny. Some utterly soul crushing. A lot of firsts. Indirect fire. Ramp ceremonies. Earning my combat spurs.

 

I think it's oddly fitting that today I received an email from a fellow officer who shared the piece I submitted to the NY Times At War blog (http://www.jessicascott.net/blog/2009...) with a ROTC Cadet who was having a hard time with a loss of a friend. The fact that something I wrote during deployment made a difference more than two years later? It's not why I wrote it back then but maybe it's why I shared it. But it means a hell of a lot to me that something I struggled with terribly made a difference for someone today.

 

Thomas Ricks asked over on Foreign Policy what he should say when soldiers asked why did my friend die when yours did not. What did you do during the war? Maybe those aren't the right questions we need to be asking. As the last soldiers depart the desert for hopefully the last time, maybe the questions we need to ask are not those of an individual but as a nation. Why did we go? Was it worth it? What difference did we make?

 

We may not like the answers we find. If we do not, though, what will we do with them? It is fine to bitch about the government over coffee but what will you do the next time our nation sends its sons and daughters to war?

 

Maybe a more important question even now is what will you do with those sons and daughters who are coming home from war? Will you hire them? Will you look at anyone who wore the uniform and think that he or she served honorably just because they wore the uniform? I have been a commander. Everyone who wears the uniform has not served honorably. But what to do with those who have but who have come home changed? Maybe not damaged. Maybe just different.

 

 

The colors are cased. We are waiting for our soldier to come home. The war is over. Did we make a difference? Did our friends die for a reason? Or were they merely called home, their time on this earth done far too soon? I don't know. I wish I did.

 

Maybe now at the end of the war, all we can hope is that we maybe, in some way, made a difference. Hopefully a good one.

 

Moral vs Legal: What's the Right Thing To Do?

This post has been sitting for a long time, primarily because it has been missing key pieces for me, personally. Being post command and getting ready to move into my second command, I'm looking hard at the choices I made, the leaders I developed and more, the command climate that I established. Did I always act when I was charged to do so or did I turn away? Hindsight being what it is, this post is a reflection of looking back, looking inward and trying to learn what I can do better in the future.

In Michael Sandel's book  

Guest Author: Gretchen Rix's A NEWBIE SELF-PUBLISHES

Please welcome back fellow Austin RWA author Gretchen Rix, here to talk about life since she published her first novel The Cowboy's Baby and her second book Arroyo!

 

Last July when Jessica invited me to share my Kindle publishing experiences I was full of great expectations and concentrating on getting The Cowboy's Baby out. Just learning how to do it and do it right took up a lot of my time. I was self-publishing. I'm still self-publishing (although now everyone wants to call it indie publishing).

 

Maybe the great expectations weren't realized, but the good expectations came through. That e-book has sold more than 2,500 copies at last count. But a lot has changed in that year and a bit. And almost all of it grew out of the self-publishing experience.

 

I've got Twitter to keep up. I write a blog. There is Facebook. There are the Austin RWA meetings each month. I judge a couple of romance writing contests. And now I've just put my second novel out, Arroyo, a paranormal western.

 

But the same week I did that I also wrote a Q&A on my blog with a couple of very successful thriller writers. My paperback POD of The Cowboy's Baby went up on the whale table at Book People (a famous bookstore in Austin) giving it more than a fighting chance at sales. And I was preparing to sell The Cowboy's Baby in a booth at Lockhart's Evening With Dickens festival the first weekend in December (plus promoting some other writers as well).

 

I just finished selling fifteen copies as one of the featured authors at this year's Evening With The Authors in my own hometown. I just prepared a book review of Stirred by J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch, and one for Deb Sanders' debut romance novel Stone Cold Justice, and just did one more promised for another best selling author's first space western Guns of Seneca 6.

 

And then finally, with my sister, I am finishing up the third year of the Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest.

 

It's not like marketing Arroyo, or continuing to market The Cowboy's Baby is not on my mind. There's just so much else to do. The new book to start, for one. And that novelette I've already got the cover for.

 

I've read time and time again that the best marketing you can do for your e-books is just to write the next one, and make it the very best you can. Then go on to the next.

 

We'll see. It took The Cowboy's Baby more than a year to take off. That might very well be the fate of Arroyo as well. But they're published, they're available for any e-book device or app, and I'm damned proud of them. Have a look.

 

Link for B&N is http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

Link for Smashwords is http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235 and http://smashwords.com/books/view/105559

Amazon.com links are http://amzn.com/B0067NCEJ4 and http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC

Stupid Girls

 

 

A couple of nights ago, I had a conversation with my 7 year old daughter. Now, it's not like the conversation is the thing to remark on. We talk all the time. Most of the time, it's about why her clothes are in the middle of the floor or…kidding.  My kids actually talk to me a lot, about things, I don't remember talking to my mom about. But it's cool cause that's my job, right?

 

Anyway, she's been listening to P!nk on her ipod. Now for those of you who remember, I didn't give her my ipod just because I wanted her to have a cool toy. Last year we were having one hell of a time connecting after Daddy and I came home from Iraq and a good friend of mine (who ironically I reconnected with through Facebook) suggested that I give her the ipod as a way of taking a time out. If she felt herself getting irate or angry, she could say hey mommy, I'm getting mad, I'm going to take a time out and calm down. Well, it took a long time but it really did pan out. It was kind of nice that it worked.

I'm pretty strict about what she and her little sister are allowed to listen to. They know who Justin Bieber is but they haven't asked for his music (honestly, I have no idea what he sings). Their favorite music is the soundtrack to How To Train Your Dragon and Rio, so that's pretty awesome when you think about it. Anyway, I'm a fan of P!nk, I think she's got a great message for young girls, especially in this popstar hot chick day and age (mind you, we will NEVER watch the videos but that's a whole other conversation).

 

So the other night, she turned on P!nk's Stupid Girls and she asked me why P!nk was calling girls stupid. I told her she needed to listen to the lyrics because P!nk wasn't saying that girls are stupid. She was lamenting (yes I used that word) the fact that so many girls would rather be cute than smart. I read some of the lyrics off to her

What happened to the dreams of a girl president

She's dancing in that video next to 50 Cent

She thought about it and said, well, why can't I be cute and smart? Damn that kid is pretty quick. I told her she can absolutely love being a girl and dressing nice and taking care of herself but that her looks weren't what made her a good person or got her good grades. It was more important to always enjoy learning and to have a good heart and care about people than to be a cute girl that all the boys like.

Well, barely two nights passed before I found her crying in her room. I managed to pull out of her that one of her so called 'friends' had made fun of her card she'd made her.

Folks, I'm not normally moved to the thoughts of bodily harm but this child almost made the list. Look, I got it, my kid is mine and I'm going to be protective. But the mean girl bullshit didn't start with me until at least the 4th or 5th grade and then it was game on. I HATED high school until about my junior year. Middle school? Let's not really go there. Suffice to say, I was a fat, unhappy geek who used to leave high school once I got my driver's license to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. And yes, I ate my feelings.

I am completely, 100% aware that I cannot fight my daughter's battles for her. I am also aware that I turned out ok but then again, there's that saying that goes something like "but for the grace of God, there go I". I don't want my kid to go through the teasing and the fat jokes and the feeling ugly. I don't want her to look in the mirror and see anything less than the beautiful, smart, thoughtful kid that's there.

And this spiteful, hateful kid in her class took something my daughter did to be thoughtful and tore her up over it. So while I may have wanted to tell my daughter to tell that spiteful wench to kiss her ass, I did manage to make her laugh when I told her not to do that otherwise Mommy would have to see the principle.

I made her laugh. I talked her through what real friends are. It's not the quantity of the friends you have, it's the quality. I can count on less than 2 hands the number of people in this world who are true, close friends of mine. And I am fine with that.

What the other night represented was not a watershed event for my daughter. It was a watershed event for me. A wake up call that I don't have a couple more years before the mean girl bullshit starts tearing up the cute little kids that all started kindergarten together and breaks them into cliques and groups, popular kids and geeks.

I don't want my kid to be on the outside. But if that means she's not making fun of other kids so that she can fit in, maybe it's for the better. Maybe she'll grow up to be president. By then the spiteful little wench who laughed at her card will be long forgotten. But her influence will have shaped my daughter.

Hopefully, into someone strong enough to walk by and lift her head a little higher and not get sucked into the mean girl bullcrap.

 

Thoughts on Loyalty

 

The Army has these things called Army Values. They make up the acronum LDRSHIP and stand for Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage. In our society, we pay a lot of lip service to these things but at the end of the day, how many of us really ever think about these values or any other values in our day to day lives.

 

When I was in New York this summer for RWA Nationals, I was at the Random House party and talking with a thriller author and his wife and his editor. We were just making conversation and it came up that he'd been with the same editor for over 10 years. I remarked that I thought that was pretty odd and they both agreed that it was but that hey, it worked for them, right? They were a good team and the author was pretty stuck on being with the team.

 

Now this post is NOT about staying with a publisher or with anyone out of loyalty, so don't misconstrue that. But, in the publishing world and in the business world in general, how much does loyalty matter? I'll tell you the first thing that comes to mind: brand loyalty. Companies want you to become loyal to this thing called a brand. Ok, whatever. That's not a value, that's a psychological reaction but anyway.

 

Do you make decisions at all based on any type of values system? Do you make a decision based on what's right or what the ethical thing is to do? How many times do we as a society consider what the right thing to do even is?

 

And on a personal level, who are you loyal to? I'll tell you in my Army life, there are a handful of people I am loyal to. That could pick up the phone today and call me and I would bend over backwards to do whatever it was they needed. A handful. Not everyone I ever served with. Not every old boss. Maybe dozen people tops that I would say I have loyalty to.

The same thing goes in the writing world. There have been a whole lot of people who have helped me, listened to me, supported me over the years. I have loyalty to them. I would drop everything to read for them or publish a blog or do anything I could to help support whatever they're doing because they were there for me.

Loyalty is not given freely. Loyalty is not something everyone earns or even deserves. If I have no loyalty to you, does that make me a bad person? A bad writer? No, I don't think it does unless my lack of loyalty to you means that I would in turn to unethical things to you.

 

I guess the whole point of this post is to ask the question: who are you loyal to? What would you do for that loyalty? What does that loyalty keep you from doing and is that a good or a bad thing?

Anatomy of A Website Crash

 

Sit back and grab a chair and allow me to spin you a tale of self caused cyber woe. It starts with, as most of these tales do, with an errant click of a mouse and misreading of two simple words: now or later.

 

All right enough of that. Seriously, I have issues. Big ones. Maybe it's the Army running through my muscle memory, maybe it's just my personality, but to say that I have control issues is, well, nothing short of exceedingly obvious. I've been griping about my hosting service for a while because I'm reasonably certain the hosting isn't the fastest but again, could easily be my own lack of knowledge and pure stubbornness that probably contributed to this.

 

I am a signal officer. Trust me when I say the user is their own worst enemy when it comes to tech support. But, I digress. So a good friend of mine over at Friendly Web Consulting who does amazing website design and humors me when I get a wild hair to do something with my site (like crash it while deployed in Iraq) offered to help me move my hosting provider since I only had a few weeks left on my original plan. Cool. All I have to do is give her access to my FTP site and she'll make sure nothing is royally destroyed.

 

Key task there: sit there and do nothing. Keep that in mind, it will be important later.

 

So I'm fiddling around with the account settings and I get an email from Godaddy saying my hosting plan is set to auto renew in a few days. So what does your intrepid do it yourselfer do? I mosey on into the Godaddy portal and go ahead and delete the hosting plan.

What I THOUGHT I'd done was delete the hosting plan on its expiration date. What I ACTUALLY did was delete the whole thing time now. And so here's a lesson for all hosting companies out there: charging your customers an exorbitant fee to fix their mistakes may be good for your bottom line in the short term, but you will win no customer service awards in the long run. But again, more on that in a second.

 

So I deleted the entire database. I did this, albeit accidently. And since it's two weeks after my release, I've still got a fair amount of traffic heading to my site. And now? Nothing. Cue oh shit moment.

Luckily, I had backed everything up recently and by recently, I mean last month. So I lost a few posts, but nothing major. I'd recently installed a bunch of plugins courtesy of Jane Friedmann's blog on plugins so that data was actually salvaged. All in all, I lost about a day unscrewing all of my settings and widgets. Not bad, considering I completely erased my database.

 

The lesson learned in all of this is make a back up. Because some companies will soak you an insane amount of money to get your data back. The four or five blog posts I lost were not worth over $150 that Godaddy wanted to charge me to fix the database. But what if I had NO back up? Would I have paid them $150 to get back the last 3 years of blogs? Yeah, probably. I admit that it was my mistake. But soaking me for it does not engender me to them when I still had time left on my contract with them.

Excerpt from BECAUSE OF YOU

Shane hooked his hands behind his back, looking more relaxed than he had at the beginning of the night. Jen frowned and for a brief moment, thought that he'd actually enjoyed himself during the fight. "Trent, take your wife home. And I better not see you at the gym before ten. I'll take accountability until First Sergeant gets there."

"Thanks, man. See you in the morning." Trent walked off, his wife's arm wrapped around his waist. Laura leaned back, shooting Jen a half-drunken, enthusiastic thumbs- up.

Jen felt a pang of sadness overshadowed by something else. A feeling both awkward and intense that sparked to life when she looked up at Shane. All at once, it struck her that she was alone with him in a dimly lit parking lot.

And she wasn't embarrassed or self-conscious or afraid.

For the first time in she couldn't remember how long, she felt a pang of desire that wasn't overruled by the constant heat of the scar on her chest. She let the awareness of her femininity coast through her veins, and she savored the feeling along with the man.

He was leaving for Iraq in the morning. She could hold on to this one moment. What's the worst that could happen?

***

When the fight had broken out, Shane had seen her standing in the path of the two fighters. He'd mentally urged her to move aside, but everything she'd done had only brought her closer to harm's way. Finally, he'd surrendered to instinct, and stepped in to move her to safety. Looking down at her now, at her hesitant smile mixed with a hint of expectation, he felt it again. The same emotion he'd felt earlier that night. The urge to protect. To shelter. It flickered to life inside of him, something long dormant unfurling inside warmth. The feeling staggered him with its simplicity and power. Had he not been leaving for Iraq in the morning, he might have taken that single step forward and closed the gap between them. She was temptation bundled with a nervous tension—a combination he found absolutely sweet.

"I don't bite," he said, stuffing his hands into his back pockets.

"I'm not worried. You're supposed to be one of the good guys, right?"

Shane chuckled quietly. "My men might disagree."

She narrowed her eyes and peered up at him thoughtfully. "That's the second time

you've said that tonight. Why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?"

"I'm not nice. I'm effective. They're mutually exclusive in my world." Shane tried

to keep the bitterness from his smile but gave up, surrendering to the truth with a sigh. She was easy to talk to. Something else he was out of practice with.

"Really? Is your world really all that different?"

"I'm a rifle platoon sergeant in a combined arms battalion. I was issued weapons, not baskets of flowers."

"Can you translate that to non-army?" she asked.

"Infantry. I train my men to shoot things." Shane felt like an awkward teen, unsure of what to say or do.

"Ah. Much easier to understand." She tipped her chin. "But it doesn't explain why

Laura has such a high opinion of you if you're such a bad guy."

God but he needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere other than talking to this

particular beautiful woman. Laura would unman him over this if he so much as blinked wrong at Jen, let alone give in to the desire to move beyond small talk.

"Can I, ah, make sure you get to your car okay?"

Her mouth was curled in the sweetest half smile, like she couldn't quite figure him out. "Not going to answer?"

"Walking you to your car does not involve psychotherapy. At least, I didn't think it did."

She laughed quietly, the noise of the bar fading a little as they rounded the corner of the parking lot.

She paused and looked over her shoulder at him. A single beam of light slanted across her cheek and almost, he gave in to the urge to trace his thumb over her skin. When she froze, her lips parted just slightly, he stepped into her space. Not close enough to scare her, he hoped. He might regret this. But he wasn't going to spend the next year wondering what it would have been like. "Shit, I'm not good at this."

"Good at what?" Her face was bathed in shadows now, and she rubbed her hands over her arms. He placed a hand on her shoulder, hesitating and unsure, but filled with a need he couldn't explain.

"I'd like very much to kiss you good night," he whispered, and felt like an urgent seventeen-year-old for even asking. But the moment her lips parted and she lifted her chin, just a little, he was done. "I'd like that, too."

His breath caught in his throat as he lowered his mouth to hers. He hesitated, nudging her lips open before he curved his mouth over hers. It had been far too long since he'd kissed a woman simply for the sake of it. And now?

Now he felt like he was drowning in her.

A deep, hard ache rose within him. An ache that he would not, no matter how she might lean into him, satisfy tonight. Maybe in a year, if he came home, he might give her a call.

But for tonight, all he had was this kiss. This soft, yearning kiss that tugged at a passion within him that he'd thought long dead. Her sensual gasp against his tongue, the soft stroke of hers against his twisted up inside of him and made him want more, so much more than he could ever hope to have in a single night. He lifted his hand, brushing his finger over her throat, and felt her heart hammering against her skin.

***

Jen sighed quietly as Shane kissed her, afraid this was just a dream. The taste of

him flowed through her, singing through her blood. And then? Then she kissed him back. She slipped her tongue into his mouth, tasting beer and mint and everything sensual and arousing about kissing a man. She burned, a slow fire for this man lighting through her veins.

For Shane.

There was a delicious ache inside of her and she held on to it, clung to it. His arms were strong around her, his skin hot beneath her fingertips. He shifted and pulled her closer, until she was softness and heat pressed against steel.

She sighed and leaned into him. He traced his fingertips down her spine, his hand

warm and solid against her lower back.

He was hard and rough, surrounding her with his kiss, his body. She tried telling

herself this wasn't what she thought it was. But she'd never lied to herself before; she wasn't about to start now.

This man was attracted to her. Her.

She refused to argue with it, and instead gave herself over to the utterly arousing sensation of being desired. This was what she missed about her former life. That beautiful sensation of a first kiss, the delicious tug of first desire deep in her belly. She lost herself in his kiss, in the slide of his thumb over her back.

Arousal sang through her blood the moment his fingers brushed against the soft skin of her belly. She gasped softly at the power in his hands. His scent wrapped around her like spice and silk and urged her closer to something she hadn't allowed herself to crave.

***

He felt her soften a little more with each moment. Shane had never imagined this

and he was completely unprepared for the strength of his own reaction. For once in his life, he surrendered. To the moment. To the taste and feel of Jen. Just Jen and the feeling of being wanted.

He wanted to hear her gasp again, to hear the sweetness of that sound and to carry the memory of it into the darkness with him. He slipped his hand up over the arc of her ribs, swallowing each gasp, each sigh as she reacted to his touch.

He was not prepared for her to stiffen.

He froze immediately, stilling his hand at the edge of her ribs. Her fingers flexed against his forearms and she eased away. Shane rested his hands lightly on her shoulders, even as he brushed his lips over hers again, determined to ease the sudden awkwardness, if not erase it.

"I'd hate for you to think I'm one of those easy girls," he said, his lips twisted in a grin. "You'll have to at least buy me dinner."

"I'll still respect you in the morning." She laughed, and just like that, the tension between them was gone. "It was really great seeing you tonight."

He cupped her cheek, her skin so incredibly soft beneath his rough hands. She was tender and beautiful, and for once he truly wished he had more time before he left. He'd never know if tonight could have led to something more. "You, too."

She blinked hard and Shane wondered at the sudden emotion he saw flicker in her eyes. "Be safe this year?"

"I'll do my best."

"You do that."

He kissed her then, sweetly this time, and he was intensely glad that she didn't

stiffen or pull away. He hadn't ruined this precious moment after all. "Good-bye, Jen."

"Good-bye, Shane."

He swallowed the bite of hard emotion that lodged suddenly in his throat. She'd given him one hell of a memory to carry with him into the desert.

He'd hold the memory of that kiss with him even as he walked—willing and able— into a war. He'd volunteered to serve, but tonight, for the first time, he was walking away from something precious. Because of Jen, he had a reason for coming home.

B & N | Amazon | Powell's| iBookstore

Tribute to Anne McCaffrey

A legend passed yesterday. I don't normally mourn for people I don't know. I'm saddened when important people pass, people who made an impact in the the world. But tonight, oddly enough, I'm mourning the passing of Anne McCaffrey because she had such an impact in my life.

I first discovered Anne's work in the 7th grade. I remember struggling through Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern because I couldn't understand that 'clutch' meant to lay eggs or that between was literally the place between places where the dragons traveled telepathically. Then, I found Dragonflight and was hooked. Dragonflight was the first love scene I ever read, and really, the first romance, between a bedraggled Lessa and the heroic F'lar.

I started writing because of Anne McCaffrey. Though I pray my mother is lying, I used to write fan fiction based on Anne's world though thinly disguised other creatures instead of dragons and allegedly, she has some of those notebooks lying around. I hope not because I'm pretty sure they're plagiarism but to an unhappy 13 year old, they were an escape from an otherwise crappy life (or so I thought at the time).

There are few other writers whose works have stayed with me since that young age. I can pick up any of Anne's Pern novels and be transported to a comforting place, a world where a dragon can carry you in an instant to another place or another time. I discovered romance in DragonQuest. Who can forget how F'nor stood by as Brekke struggled through the loss of her dragon?

People who haven't been touched by books may laugh and scoff at the impact Anne's worlds had on me. I mean, dragons? But you know, when I told my family that Anne had passed, they knew the impact she had on me.

This week is thanksgiving and now do many are mourning the passing of this great author. Choose instead to be grateful that she wrote, that she gave us the world of Pern and Ireta and Peytabee and so many more. The dragons are mourning.

And so are we.

Changing the Way I Deal with Facebook

It's been an amazing week for me as a debut author. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Hell, Oprah calling wasn't even as cool as this week has been for me. Thank you to everyone who retweeted, shared on facebook, or just dropped me a note to say hi.

The best part about this week has been hearing from readers. I've been blogging for a while and I've gotten notes or comments on certain posts that were overly charged but I've never had a book out there before. So this week, I had to change the way I dealt with Facebook.

Facebook became a means of conversation for me. Honestly, I was surprised. My social network of choice is twitter. I can be sitting at traffic light, hop on, either see something and comment or drop in a smart ass remark and hop off, going about my day as an Army officer. I had been eschewing Facebook because it takes that all important thing that I don't have enough of: time.

But here's what I discovered this week. Readers are on Facebook. Readers use Facebook as a way of connecting not just with authors but with the people behind the book. This week, I had my first experience with readers who took the time to not only read something that I spent almost five years of my life working on but also who were touched by this book.

Jessica – I started reading Because of You last might. And despite my 4 yr old throwing up in our bed and despite the fact that I needed to get up at 5 am to get to work for a special meeting, I was compelled to read until 1 am. (I started at about 9;30 and I'm a slow reader.) I at chapter 12 and LOVING your story!! I'm so far from a military wife but goes to show that a well told story draws in a reader regardless of their situation. Keep up the great work — love the secondary characters by the way. They add an incredible depth that really moves the story along. Can't believe you're a first-time novelist!

I have never been a romance reader, but at the suggestion from a friend, I pre ordered your book. I have read it and loved it. I will happily read more of your books. Thank you.

I've also had breast cancer and disfiguring surgery, I can identify with her, but I was really impressed with the sensitivity the author displayed in dealing with the situation.

So I've learned that Facebook, too can be about conversation. The question is now what are you talking about?

Thanks so much to everyone who made this week an absolute blast for the release of BECAUSE OF YOU. It's been amazing and that's not because of anything I've done. That's all you.

24 Hours Until Launch

I thought I was going to be all cool and suave and try to act like my first book coming out wasn't a big deal. I wanted be all, yeah, it's cool, and be professional and not spam up twitter and facebook and squeal every time something cool happened.

Yeah, um, I kind of failed. I got choked up last night when I saw my amazing editor Sue Grimshaw on USA Today talking about BECAUSE OF YOU. I was sitting in my study, attempting to revise a scene and instead, I was bawling like a baby (I haven't slept in 2 nights, so there's that, too. I'm not just a cotton headed ninny muggings, I swear). I went from crying to holy crap I wish my husband was here for me to celebrate with. Someone to jump up and down and sqee with (okay he's not a jump up and down kind of guy but still, you get the idea).

The whole process for bringing BECAUSE OF YOU to print has actually been really smooth. But each time a new milestone hit, the day it was up for preorder, the day I first got below the 10,000 rank on Amazon (I know, I know, the numbers don't mean anything) the day the first of so many awesome blurbs came in. And then the reviews, too.

I didn't just sell a book that no one wanted. I sold a book that people like. That had one great reviewer emailing me and telling me how much my book wrecked her and she couldn't stop thinking about it for days. That's the most awesome thing someone could tell me.

Someone told me that 5 years to write and sell that first book isn't really all that long when you consider in that time frame I had a toddler, moved from Fort Benning to Fort Gordon, back to Fort Hood. Went to Iraq. Commanded a company. And a whole slew of other things. When you look at it like that, yeah, it wasn't a lot of time. But to quote Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon, I have stubbornness issues.

So I'm sorry I've been kind of spamming up twitter. I'm a little excited that BECAUSE OF YOU is coming out. I was literally considering giving up for a little while when Sue called and said she really loved it. And I know that it's supposed to be about the book and the art but for me, just a little bit, it's kind of a validation that I didn't suck. That I was actually writing a story that spoke to people about something I'm a little passionate about.

So to everyone who has supported me, who has retweeted or shared a link on facebook or who didn't unfollow or unfriend me for spamming up their timelines, thank you. Everyone who has already ordered BECAUSE OF YOU. Thank you. I hope it doesn't let you down.

Thanks, gang, for going on this amazing roller coaster ride with me. It's been a long, strange trip but never boring!