Touching the Dream…my book in print

As I stood in the lobby of the posh hotel waiting for my editors, my stomach was anxiously turning over with mixed feelings of nerves and excitement. The moment I’d been working toward was finally here—I was collecting the very first print copy of The Wotton Pack and The Ghost House.

I was nervous because when you meet your hero or achieve a dream, you can build up huge expectations, and I didn’t want to be disappointed by the real moment compared to all the dreaming I’d been doing.

But I was not disappointed.

As I pulled the book, my book, out of the jiffy bag that contained it, I was greeted by the bright colours of the shiny cover. The familiar image I had on my fake vision book, the same image I have on my coffee cup at work, and the image that is everywhere in my house—that image was my vision, and it also kept me working toward my goal.

The image that I imagined and illustrated myself was now the shiny front cover of my very own book that I imagined and then wrote.

So as you can probably imagine, it was a pretty cool feeling especially when I’ve been working so hard to achieve this dream despite the many challenges.

I know that if it wasn’t for things like spell check and very patient, talented editors (who not only edit but develop and teach at the same time), then writing my own book would have been pretty much impossible.

But thank you for those things because my moment was finally here.

They kept telling me, “It’s just the proof copy,” but all I could see was my book—the piece of my imagination in a physical form forever. And that feeling was amazing.

Shortly after when I came back down to earth, my partner, Lynne, and I walked over to a spot that I used to sit and write at.

We cracked open my bottle of “goal champagne” that had been waiting for this day as long as I had.

It had been sat in my wine rack for ages with instructions on a Post-it note to only “Open once the Wotton pack and the Ghost House is a physical book.”

I was drinking pink champagne by the river, holding my very own book, and showing any stranger that walked past. I felt ecstatic. I’d finally done it.

Lynne took this moment to give me a “book present” (as we call it), and it was a collectable carving of Disney’s Elliot from Pete’s Dragon. That really moved me, because it reminded me just how much Lynne gets me. You see, I’ve always used Elliot as an analogy: he represents how someone can use their imagination to change their life. That might not be what Disney intended him for, but that’s what he represents to me.

And I guess that’s the path I embarked on when I started writing The Wotton Pack. I was using my imagination to change my life and guess what? So far, so good. 😉