Is that really my name there on the cover?

Well, the time has finally come! Dear Isabelle arrived today and well.... take a look for yourself... doesn't that cover look down right spooky? I am so thrilled and excited and nervous all at the same time. I still can't believe it.

This afternoon around 2pm, the delivery man came to my door with so many of these heavy boxes and he asks me, "Are you Isabelle?"

Close.

"No, but I know her well."

I opened that box so fast and lifted up the flaps and there it was. My first novel. For the first hour I was just in a daze, feeling the cover in my hands. Flipping through the pages. Reading random pages as if I had never glimpsed those words before. Definitely a surreal moment.

The wonderful team at Harbor House really did an amazing job.

Can you tell I'm a delayed reactor? It's nearly midnite now and I still cannot believe that my first manuscript is now a real book. I better sleep on it.

What happened to the champagne? This is my very first post! Salut!

It's 10:45pm right now... pretty early still! I'm so excited that The Nocturnal Novelist blog is finally up and running!

As I type this, copies of Dear Isabelle are in a warehouse somewhere in San Francisco tonite. They will be delivered to my home tomorrow! So between the hours of 12 and 4pm, I will be frantically pacing back and forth in my little apartment (it's times like those I wish I had developed a habit for smoking so I could have something interesting to do while I pace) awaiting the arrival of several boxes of my very first novel. I'm already envisioning just how happy I'll feel when I open the first box and take a deep inhale... (a box of newly published books smell just like a new car, right?)... and then dive into a copy and make sure they spelled my name right. Because you never, never know.

More to come... cheers.