Squee! ZOMGWTFBBQ!!! Or, How I Reacted to My First Acceptance Letter

Woke up this morning, bleary-eyed and bitter - same as any morning when I have to wake up before noon (which is just about every morning). Hopped over to my laptop to check my email accounts. Screamed and jumped up and down like my name had just been called on The Price is Right.

Right there in my humble little gmail was an email from Laurie Rauch saying they had picked "Like a Thief in the Night" for the Strangers in the Night Valentines Day 2008 anthology, and was I still interested? Of course I was still interested. I was over-the-moon still interested. I was hopping-up-and-down-scaring-the-bejeebus-out-of-my-cats still interested. I replied to the email and then hopped over to my blog to post the good news.

Kate left a comment on my last post delivering the best bad news ever - namely that I was disqualified from the Samhain 1st line contest because the contest was not open to Samhain authors. (Squeee!!! OMGOMG!). A word here: Kate is awesome (go buy her books), and has been so encouraging. Her alter ego, Summer Devon is my ePub hero.

My husband was a little weirded out to find his morning grouch of a wife waiting for him with a crazy smile, breakfast and coffee. He was ok once I assured him that the uncharacteristic morning good cheer was due to good news and not due to aliens secretly abducting his wife and replacing her with a preternaturally perky stepford zombie android.

Called my mom and told her the good news. Then I told her she couldn't read the story because it had S-E-X in it, and knowing my mom had read a story about S-E-X would make it difficult for me to continue believing I was the result of a virgin birth. (Never mind that it was her old Harlequins and Barbara Cartlands that got me started on this whole Romance thing in the first place. Denial isn't just a state of mind, its a state of being.) She says she's still my biggest fan.

Lastly, I sent off an email to Bam thanking her for holding her monthly writing contest, as "Like a Thief in the Night" grew out of my two hundred word entry for her May contest.

Writing all this down has helped me calm down a little - but Oh, here's something else that makes me so happy - the other authors in the anthology are Bonnie Dee (she of the many, many great stories!) and Veronica Wilde (I heart all things Elvis, so I've been jonesing to read her forthcoming short story Hunk of Burnin Love). I'm both excited and scared to see my name on the same list as these two amazing authors.

And now, here I am, posting the whole thing on my blog. Dayum. It's 1:30 - I'd better get some work done.

Remember to spay and neuter your pets!