I’ve had vertigo since last Friday and the prednisone just makes me a little more dizzy but in a different way. It also makes me pee a lot more than I’d care to admit.

I’m telling you all this as subterfuge.

It’s a ruse to throw you off the trail of (for me) some pretty big news.

I’m wasting time right now, and likely annoying anyone who’s reading this, in order to prolong the inevitable.

That I tell you what’s been going on in my life since last week. I could go back farther …

So ok.

I started writing again (I can hear you yelling) because I really missed it.

I didn’t tell you that I’d been asking God and the Universe and meditating a lot on it.

I was fairly consumed by it. It had pushed a lot of what I was doing to the back seat. I was full of questions and no true mentor to lead me along… Questions like: when should I get back to it? What should I do with it when I start again? How do I know I should do it?

All those kinds of things — days and hours in distraction, the kind of stuff that’s a lot like this is — right now — which simply served as a ruse to stop from doing.

Acting.

Executing.

Writing.

Well, here ’tis.

A few weeks ago a friend’s father died. I reached out to my friend to talk about his dad and help him wade through his grief. It’s a hard time — especially if your dad was as cool to my friend as his father was to him. You want to cry and you want to scream and then you get tired of the crying and the weirdness and the rawness of it all … you don’t like the attention or the brooding. He needed to relate to someone and I was relatable.

So a few days went by.

He called me again and asked me if I’d help him write his father’s eulogy. I was honored. Of course I said I would. But I hadn’t seen his father since the 80s, when my friend graduated from college. Didn’t matter… I knew this. I knew my friend and I knew he needed help and this was help I could give, easily.

This was my sign, as my therapist would tell me. I didn’t need a grand piano to crash down from the sky and land, wood flying everywhere, all splintered and loud and dangerous.

He sent me his notes, which were raw and full of exclamation points (what was it Fitzgerald said about exclamation points … I can’t remember, but he wasn’t a fan) which were understandable because my friend is energetic, BIG personality, but not a writer. That’s ok… I am. In a week, he and I worked — he on his grief and me on his father’s eulogy and I have to say… I turned his words into … I hate to say this, but I turned them in to glory. This was a gorgeous eulogy and my friend and his family and mother were so grateful. Tears were shed. Requests for copies of the eulogy were made.

That was my grand piano.

So… here I go, here’s the news: I signed a publishing contract on Monday with Balboa Press (a division of Hay House). I have an imprimatur of my book that I will finish writing and that will be offered on the Hay House catalog. AND the Library of Congress. It will have an ISBN and everything.

I get ahead of myself.

What’s my deadline? I have no clue. They didn’t give me one. I know, it’s a little fishy. It makes me think I’ve just handed over money for them to count while I don’t write my book (and it looks like that) BUT, I have decided that I will submit my first draft by Labor Day. In the meantime, I have March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day) as my outline deadline and my first submission to the team.

The good news (Balboa doesn’t know this) is that I have written several books… you just don’t have access to them. They’re here on my blog, but they’re hidden. So I’m going to piece together some things I’ve been writing the last few years with the big book (85k words) I wrote back in 2012 (and thankfully they do blend) and then see what happens. After all, I’ve bought this editorial team.

I think.

Do I know what all of this means? No, not really. I paid them some money to be my editorial team. I can hear you: “Uh, Mol… Doesn’t it work the other way around? That they find you and they pay you?” Probably… but I also know that things don’t ALWAYS work that way.

Could I just as easily have just put this thing on Amazon publishing and see what happens? Sure. And I’ve thought about that. But I’ve seen the stuff on Amazon publishing and not all of it is great; a lot of it is messy, haphazard and lacks proofreaders. To be honest, I’m 52. I’m not feeling that Davey Crocket vibe: I’m not interested in going out yonder all on my own and catch squirrels and cook ’em on a stick and sleep under a lean-to just to prove to myself that I can make my own way. Shit, I want beta readers and people whose livelihoods are vested in my success. I’m not like Justin Bieber or Sarah Bareilles who have the fortune to just “be discovered.” Creating good writing — be it in a song, a play, a book, an article… It’s hard freaking work. But I’ve been given the nod by those closest to me to slash the line on the catapult, let her fly and see what sticks.

Do I know if everything will pan out and the book will be read and people will like it? Nope. Will I be happy to share my craft? Yes. I think that will be a very satisfying feeling.

But as Tony my lawyer says, “anyone can be hit by a bus” so I may as well get busy living.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!! ACK!!!!