September 2008:: The Call

I'd not long come back into the house from doing some clearing and burning for the summer fire season.  The phone went and it was Lucy Gilmour from Mills and Boon London.  She sounds so lovely and friendly!  And she said that they wanted to buy the book..... at which point I managed to wobble over to a chair and sit down (in all my smelly, smoky, ashy glory) and mumble omigosh, omigosh, omigosh.  It's so hard to be scintillating when you've had a short circuit in the little grey cells and your face is trying to split horizontally!

I started to shake like a leaf which meant the rest of the conversation was filtered through this weird castanet thing happening between my earing and the receiver.  Fortunately Lucy (my editor, my EDITOR, MY editor!! argh, okay breathe...) has also put everything in an e-mail so it is REAL!

I got off the phone and bounced off a wall or two and then thought, I must ring Glenn (dh) right bloody now!  And of course he had his mobile switched off so I left a voice message.  And then I texted him RING ME!  And in desperation I sent him an email saying RING ME RING ME RING ME!..... I nearly exploded in the quarter hour that it took for him to ring back (he was in a meeting)!  Argh!  Could have been messy!  Anyway I could tell he was smiling all over his face and it was just lovely!

It's a M&B Medical and it's the manuscript that came third in last year's Valerie Parv.  This story has got Gold Coast stardust on it!  I felt very motivated to do something constructive about my writing after that conference --  I was the lucky, lucky person who won the Neo raffle.

I gave myself a jolly good talking to as I sat on the back of the motorbike on our way back to Victoria.  When I got home, I packed up the partial and sent it off.  So this manuscript started off on the slush pile two years ago to the month!

It's coming out in the UK in July next year.  I don't know what it's going to be called.... and I don't know what I'm going to be called either!  I am hoping to keep "Sharon" coz it'll be a lot easier for me to know who I am on my ditzy days.

And speaking of ditzy days..... this morning, Glenn looked at the socks he'd worn to work yesterday (which was CD - CALL DAY!) and it was an odd pair - a dark navy sock with a black one.  Such a great look when he's all kitted out in his suit looking ever so seriously professional!  I've been a LOT distracted since the Melbourne conference with revisions!  So I think a new good luck superstition has been born in the Archer household.  Never mind the rabbit's foot, I'll be sending poor Glenn to work in odd socks!