The publisher reached out and asked if I’d like to read it. I’d never heard of the author but the cover … o h that cover … it stopped me in my tracks. I check my stats on this little blog sometimes and I see that I have over 700 new and unique readers each month and I wonder if it’s just my best friend hitting refresh over and over. I am constantly in awe that people actually want to read what I write. I decided that maybe I needed a place to put all these books in so I could stop typing out the same few titles and blurbs … Outlander, Gone With the Wind, anything by Jackie Collins ( see my range, she said with a disarmingly elitist smile) or maybe one of those rom-com’s by Meg Cabot or J ennifer Weiner.Īnd then it grew … from a few posts detailing my favorite books to publicity reps reaching out to me and asking if they could send me books to read in exchange for an honest review (seriously … there are people who will send you free books? Sign me up!) and then meeting and greeting over 2,000 dedicated followers on my little Instagram account … I was floored, to say the least. It’s the perfect time to catch up on reading. Texas gets HOT, and that means many days either by the pool or propped up under the air conditioning at home. Year after year, summer would come around and subsequently so would requests for book recommendations. Nancy Drew studiously kept watch over the creeping shadows of my room at night for me, and Betty Ren Wright’s novel The Dollhouse Murders helped me pass summer after summer in the humid Louisiana countryside. My best friends were Kristy and Mary Anne from Ann M. I wonder sometimes if authors realize the impact they can have when they sit down to pen a novel.
Much like they did for Matilda, books took on a pivotal role in the person I ended up becoming as an adult. Books meant being able to escape a childhood that was teeming with abuse and mixed messages. Everyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with books and reading. I’d just celebrated the first anniversary of my little writing blog, and I was high on its unexpected success.
It was about a year ago when I requested this little book called Next Year in Havana.
“Tonight, I looked at myself in the mirror, and it occurred to me that perhaps adulthood has come not with a white gown and a view thrust upon me against my wishes, but rather in this moment, with this decision to claim my womanhood, to use it to get what I want rather than what everyone else wants for me.
0 kommentar(er)
