Lucky asked David Dalglish:

What was your "I made it" moment? Like the moment you realized all your hard work had paid off, and everything was gonna be okay?

David Dalglish If I had to pick one, it was the day I quit my paper route. It might seem quaint, but it was a rural route, Sundays only, that I'd been doing since high school, waking up at 4am to drive around a bunch of Missouri backwoods roads delivering newspapers. It was good money, money I desperately needed for a very long time, as I cobbled together income from a bunch of different sources to make do while living in our trailer park.

But as the sales continued, I'd quit my job at Pizza Hut, then stopped substitute teaching, so only the paper route was left.

So when my self-published income remained steady for months and months, I finally made the decision to quit that little part time job I'd been doing for over ten years. So finally sleeping in on a Sunday, and having no other income but my writing income? That'd be when it finally hit me, I'd say.

The second closest would be walking into the local B&N to sign copies of A Dance of Cloaks on its launch day. There's something special about knowing so many people (my agent, Orbit's editors, their art dept, sales team, B&N's stock acquiring team, etc) actually think you might know what you're doing.

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