Officially Official

Well, I got the news yesterday. My book is DEFINITELY getting published. The contract is in the mail and payment will follow shortly after. The tenative publishing date is Fall 2007.

Here's the e-mail I got (in case anyone's interested):

Good morning, Kingsley,

I have some good news for you! ABC PUBLISHING has accepted your manuscript APTLY TITLED STORY for publication as a 24-page Read-it! Reader. The tentative publication date is Fall 2007. Compensation for your manuscript includes a one-time payment of $$$$ (no
royalties) and 10 copies of the finished book.

Before I submit the contract request, I'll need two things from you:

1) mailing address (this the address we'll use to send the contract and your author copies upon publication)

2) how you'd like your name to appear as the author; please choose carefully, as we cannot change your name once paperwork has been sent to the Library of Congress

As soon as I receive this info from you, I'll finish up the contract request, and the contract will be sent to you for your signature. I'm honestly not sure how long the contract/payment process takes.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a note. Oh, and I'm attaching the final edited version of the story so you can see how it turned out.

Congratulations, Kingsley! Thank you for the good work and for submitting APTLY TITLED STORY to ABC PUBLISHERS! Have a great rest o' the week ...

Best,
EDITOR LADY

(BOLDED portions are made-up names to protect the innocent, etc...)

So, that's it! I'm pretty stoked about the whole thing. Granted, this isn't my BIG book that's getting published, but it's a start and I'm guessing they'll look at future stuff I put together. I got a pretty solid idea for one on the way home from the health club with my little guy. I'm planning on scratching out the rough draft tonight. A couple more of these and I'll be bona fide.

Well, maybe not.

But again, I'll be able to reference them in query letters and hopefully attract the attention of an agent.

Now, the hard part will be waiting for fall of next year to have the finished book in my hands. Then again, this gives me lots of time to work on my other projects. Dang. It's a never-ending cycle...but then again, if given the opportunity, I'd like to do this for the rest of my life.

Well, and continue to fight fires. I couldn't give that up.

All right. So, here's the thing. Do I change the title of my blog, since it's happened? I've never been in love with the name of my blog anyway. Or do I keep it until my BIG book is published? Somehow I have a feeling a couple of my other works might see print before my baby does.

Hmmm....