This morning I went to my usual cafe, stepped in, saw the blank bagel board, then stomped off in a rage* because there were no bagels left. I took a long detour to another cafe on the Bowery all so I could calmly sit and freewrite with a toasted sesame bagel and a skim mocha**. I’ve started this new thing where, instead of blogging because this is so public, I write secret things in a secret file to myself at the start of every morning. These secret things are about my secret new novel. I haven’t even shown pages to my agent yet (though he knows they’re coming!), that’s how secret it is. But it was while writing these secrets that I had some of those grateful nostalgic thoughts I get sometimes when I realize where I am.

Cue the requisite soundtrack:

You see, it was always my dream to live here. In fact, I wanted to live here before I wanted to be a writer. And now I’m here. And writing. And it’s kind of happening all at once and I forget sometimes, when I’m focused on silly worries or other negative things I shouldn’t bother thinking about, I forget. Then I have a morning like today’s bagel-delicious morning and an afternoon in which I (1) get to meet and have lunch with my awesome new publicist, (2) go to my publisher’s office to sign my name dozens of times on books I’ve written that are actually about to be published, (3) check wonderfully thorough proofreader’s comments on the pages of my book that is actually going to be published, and (4) visit with my wise—and endlessly amusing—editor who is actually publishing a book I wrote.

Forgive me for this post. Feeling cheerful today.

I signed all these in no time:

Yes, this means if you’re one of the people who gets an ARC for review from Penguin—or, I’ve heard, by winning a future contest on Goodreads!—it will be signed. And some of them will be stuffed with surprise bookmarks.

There are a small number of ARCs floating around now, but all those ARCs I just signed won’t be going out until the end of November… December. Not tomorrow, but soon!

All in all, was a pretty great day. 🙂

___

* I really love bagels.

** I started drinking mochas again, but dont worry, I’ll give them up once more when I go away on my writing retreat November 2.