This week I finished and submitted my futuristic, Relentless, to my editor at Berkley.  I’m happy to be done. Sort of loopy because I have end of book brain. Nervous because I hope she’ll like it. Accomplished because when I started the book it was nothing and now it’s 95,000 words.

A book is like a mini-lifetime for me. Each one takes me places I never expected to go. There are highs when I connect very deeply with my story or the characters and the words simply flow without effort. There are lows when I am stuck or blocked, when I’m frustrated because I need to get from A to B but I can’t see my way through. Times when I feel like singing a happy tune and those days when I am sure I am the suckiest writer on the planet. But like life, I keep on and keep on and when I read the end product, after I’ve edited, gotten crit, revised and gotten feedback from beta - I can celebrate each mini-lifetime for all the experiences it’s brought me.

Each time I look at my editing notebook - all 400+ pages with sticky notes and redlines and scribbles in the margins, I have this sense of intense gratitude that my life includes this experience. That I get to write books!

And then I tuck it away and begin the next book. In this case, Outshined, my next book for Berkley. A whole new mini lifetime to embark on.