you will always have a place in my heart

There will, inevitably, be mistakes in this post.  That is because I am literally shaking.  My hands are numb.  My throat is tight.  Don't call me, because I'll start crying.

I am the girl in that picture, here.  Wearing funky pants and silly hairy, my whole self just a little bit blurry.

I haven't changed much.  I still have my self-doubts, my disappointments, my too-big dreams.  I can still get cranky from time to time, I can never get my hair right, and I can still write sentences that (upon waking to them the next day) shame me.  We writers out here — we are just writers.  And sometimes things go well and sometimes they don't, and if we had to do it all alone—if I had to do it all alone—well, I am pretty darned sure that my career would have stopped long ago.  I wouldn't have stopped writing.  But I might not have books in lovely covers to share.

I owe everything—everything—to the good hearts out here who have looked up from their own projects, their own days, their own children, their own blogs and said, You have a place with us here.

Today my world broke open that much wider.  Today—yesterday—the day before—the days before that—readers—friends!— reached in and turned on a light.  I have so many to thank.  It's just so inadequate, that phrase, thank you.

In a day or two, there will be a treasure hunt, a series of blog posts, distributed across the net, that I wrote to help tell the story of the story behind You Are My Only.  I will announce the details of that in time.

But all this time that I have been working with the dear hearts on this treasure hunt, those dear hearts took the party so much wider—very sneakily preparing what has become one gigantic early party for this book.  These party planners know that I never google my own name, and so perhaps that set them free. Still, I have no idea how they did this much without me even guessing that anything more was afoot.

To attend this party, you must first visit the master schemer, the beautiful heart, the lovely lady behind There's a Book, the one and only 1st Daughter.  You must at the exact same time visit the one and only, ever invincible, always dear and wise and stunning, always surprising My Friend Amy.  You then must visit the fantastically multi-hued Chick Loves Lit (I literally screamed when I saw what she has there) and the incredibly wise, totally a-licious Bookalicious.    Soon, when I stop shaking, I will share those links that have been sent my way.  Every single one of which means the world to me.

Please don't think that I am kidding about my shaking over here.  And what I just wrote in a comment box to the 1st Daughter is true: The first thing that happened when I saw all of this just now is that I said to myself, Beth, You have to call Mom.  But Mom's in heaven, and she's looking down.  She sends her love to all of you.