I’ve been pushing myself for the past three weeks. May 1 was the day I picked my agent; three weeks later, May 22, was the day I turned in new chapters and revisions to the awesome agent after an hour of nerves over hitting Send.

May 1, I had 25 pages; May 22, I had 59.

For me, the writer obsessed with how every word matters, who can spend a full day carving out one opening paragraph and then throw it away the next morning, that’s a lot of work done in a short amount of time. And it never felt like work: It was a joy, most of the time. (The war with page 1 that some may have witnessed not withstanding.)

But you can’t keep a full-time job and write scads of paragraphs on a new novel without letting something slip.

Let’s just say no one I know is allowed inside my apartment. I have one Very Important Thing needing to be dealt with that I promise to do next week. I have a husband, poor guy, who’s barely seen me. I need to start working on publicity for DANI NOIR! And on top of that I’m pretty stressed out at work.

So, yesterday, it was a half day at the office and I got home early. So much to do and now I had the free time to do it… What did I accomplish? Falling asleep on top of an open library book. Awesome.

I’m excited for upcoming revisions and more work on the plot summary. In the meantime? I slept in this morning and had a dream where I kept climbing up this steep, grassy hill toward a stone city in the distance. I kept saying, “I can’t wait to get back on my island!” But then the dream would shift and I’d be back at the bottom of the hill, climbing up and squealing about being back on my island. Either I’m nervous about what’s about to happen with this book or I’m not yet ready to move to Brooklyn. Who knows.

But check this out. Here’s the back cover for DANI NOIR, with Dani herself revealed!

Yes, that’s Dani, playing noir detective, spying on the mystery girl in the polka-dot tights. The artist is amazing!