As a treat for finishing Runaway and the Book Blast tour, Glynn and I decided to leave the world behind for a few days. Finding a Travelzoo deal, we headed for the other end of the state and booked a room into an upscale hotel. And this was actually an upscale joint, not one of Glynn’s “Hey, baby, this place is so upscale! They have cloth towels!” kind of places.
This picture is of the hallway that led to our room. The moment I saw it, I thought of the Overlook Hotel. Glynn must have thought of the same thing because he looked at me and said, in a low voice, "Redrum." Fortunately, no ghostly little twin girls haunted the walkway at night. Unfortunately, a noisy ice machine did its best to disturb our slumber, anyway. At least our drinks were cold.
So we were in a hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona in late June -- and you know where it's really, really hot? In Scottsdale, Arizona in late June. One of the guests on our floor had come to the hotel to attend a wedding ceremony there and, as he pointed out within seconds of meeting us, he wasn't a fan of the weather. "I hope the wedding party all passes out and falls down", he said, and we wondered if maybe he should have just sent a gift, instead. Then he showed us where the ice machine was located – “You can’t miss it, it’s right across from your place” – and we wondered if maybe this was the room dedicated for Travelzoo bargain hunters.
But, overall, we had a great time. We did a little shopping, saw the Egypt exhibit at the Science Center, went to Aunt Chilada's for Mexican food, and attended our first High Tea (and the Goddess of High Tea, Julie, was amazing). When we were ready to check out, I realized I hadn’t checked our Amazon sales numbers for days. Taking a moment to do so, I saw that things were popping along at a decent pace. For a time, however briefly, “Anne Glynn” even had a rising “Amazon Author Rank”, something that was nice to see because it meant that people were downloading our stories.
Frankly, I was feeling fairly good about the whole writing thing. Maybe I was finally getting things together.
When we returned home, I discovered the paperback edition of Runaway in our mailbox. The actual, physical book looked great. Opening the cover, I read the dedication: “To L.M., who makes lemons from lemonade” … and then my eyes kind of went all blinky and I had to read it over again.
A few seconds later, I started to laugh. Glynn and I had gone over the manuscript a dozen times, we’d had beta readers go over it almost as often, and no one had ever noticed the wonky dedication. Immediately, I called my friend, L.M., and read her the dedication. She started to laugh, too.
We both agreed that maybe I have a little bit further to go before I really get things together.
RSS Feed
