One week from today, I will be a published author.

That is… I don’t even know how to describe what that is. Big. Good. Awesome. Weird. Scary. Amazing. Unreal.

I ordered some archival pens. For signing books. I seriously did that: I ordered pens, specifically to sign books with. Because I’m going to be signing books (see above re: Big Good Awesome Weird Scary Amazing Unreal).

Let’s see. What else?

I posted on Emu’s Debuts last week.

I also guest posted on Literary Rambles yesterday. If you follow that blog and comment on the post, you’ll be entered in a giveaway for a signed copy of GROUNDED, plus a really cool, limited-edition chain mail bookmark.

Now I’m going to put my head down and grade this pile of papers that is staring me in the face, because as much of a published author as I almost am, I am also still all the other things. A teacher, a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a reader, a person who has not yet finished but desperately wants to finish watching the 7th and final season of Parks & Rec. I almost feel like I should be able to put all those parts of me aside next Tuesday, and just be an author. But you know where I’ll be? Here, in my classroom, proctoring the state science test.

It’s kind of cool and fitting, though. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this here, but I was proctoring a state test a few years ago when it suddenly struck me how the Tyme series had to end, and what I had to do to revise GROUNDED, and how it could all be perfect and right. One minute, I was walking around the classroom, watching kids test. The next, I was seized by the story. I flipped over the roster on my clipboard and started writing on the back of it, and I kept writing all spring and all summer, in every spare minute, with every spare iota of energy, until I was finally ready to hand that manuscript over.

And now here we are. One week to go. Hoo boy.

Everybody, hold my hand.