It's official

At least according to Publishers Marketplace:

DeAnna Cameron's THE BELLY DANCER, set during the 1893 Chicago Worlds' Fair, in which a sheltered young woman's marriage and attempts to enter high society are threatened by a scheming widow with designs on her husband and by her fascination with the Fair's scandalous Egyptian dancers and their handsome, mysterious manager, to Jackie Cantor at Berkley, by Ellen Pepus.

The golden time

When I tell friends who are already published about my novel's lucky break, I'm getting basically the same reply: Congratulations, and enjoy the moment. With a heavy emphasis on the latter. This is the golden time, they say. Before the revisions and deadlines, before the self-marketing, before the critics. It's before all that stuff happens that can drive otherwise sane people crazy. It's the time to sit back and simply be happy about reaching a milestone.
I can't deny that part of me -- a pretty big part -- is anxious to see something in print, to be able to hold a tangible, honest-to-goodness book in my hands that has my name on it. But I'm trying to follow their advice. When I catch myself pining for that day when I can walk into a bookstore and find a book with my name on it, their words echo through me. It helps me remember that like everything else, this experience will have its ups and downs, and I want to cherish the good times while they last.

So the call came today...

You know the one I'm talking about. The one every aspiring novelist works for, waits for, practically begs for... Yeah, *that* one.

I knew it was going to be big when I answered the phone and my lovely and patient agent, Ellen Pepus of EP Literary Agency, greeted me. You see, it's been four days shy of a year that she offered to represent me and my novel, but all of our communication -- except for maybe two phone calls -- has been through e-mail. So right away I thought, this is it. She's going to fire me. She was just the sort of kindhearted professional to want to give me the benefit of a phone call instead of an impersonal e-mail to severe the relationship.

But she wasn't firing me. (Yay!) She was calling to tell me she'd received an offer for my novel. The heavens didn't exactly open up and angels didn't exactly sing, but well, it was close enough for me. It's still early, and nothing is final. There's even a chance another offer might come through. But right now, none of that matters. Right now, I'm ecstatic that somebody out there likes my novel as much as I do and that I have a better chance today than I ever have of actually seeing it published. Right now, that's enough.

Want to know how it all plays out? Check back, and I'll fill you in...