The copy-edited pages of my manuscript, Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, are sitting on my desk in a box, waiting for me to read through them again for any changes and approval. I worked on the book for five years, but haven’t looked at it since my agent, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, and I made final revisions and sent it off to a list of editors in May 2009, holding our breath that one of them would accept it for publication. In July 2009, Seal Press did. Jenni called me on my cell phone with the news as my family and I drove down the 5 freeway to San Diego. Looking out the window as as I listened to her relay the details, I felt my future was as wide and limitless as the farm lands of Central California. Selling a book for publication had been my dream for as long as I could remember, and it was finally coming true. The photo above was my view as I heard the news.
When I picked up the first ten pages of the manuscript yesterday and started reading, I had a reaction I had not anticipated: I started to cry. Suddenly I was back in the lobby of the Guatemala City hotel where we first met our daughter, the details so vivid and clear I felt I was reliving the moment. My greatest hope is that someday someone else, somewhere, will read the book and have a similar reaction.
My task today is to finish reading the copy-edited pages and make necessary revisions. A few weeks later, edited galleys will arrive. It’s hard to believe that after so many years of obsession with this project, I’m at last nearing an end. Maybe it’s a beginning.
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I can’t wait to read it!
Getting closer! November will be here soon, or so it feels like to me. Hope you like the story (and tell your friends if you do!). Thanks for reading my blogs. I so appreciate it.