Valid

I swear, I tried to post while I was on vacation. I did! Because as we were waiting to board our flight, this guy struck up a conversation with me. This incredibly hot guy. Who seemed completely charmed by my kids. Who kept glancing at my cleavage.

I told you all about it, I swear -- I wrote for like forty-five minutes while my kids were painting t-shirts or something, and then when I hit the Publish button... it turned out that the flaky resort wifi had dumped me, and Blogger had failed to save even a single word of the post. So it's gone, and after that I didn't really have the heart to try again. But I'm back! And hopefully ready to start writing again. We'll see how it goes.

***

But let me tell you what happened yesterday! Yesterday, while I was going through my vacation photos and posting them on Flickr, the doorbell rang.

By the time I got to the door, the delivery guy was gone, but waiting for me... was my print copy of Masks Off! I got to hold an actual print, dead-tree book in my hot little hands that has my name in it! And words that I wrote! I don't know that it makes me any more of a "real" author than the e-books I've already published, but it feels like some kind of validation.

***

So I was talking to my therapist yesterday, and I said something disparaging about the Day Job, and she frowned and checked her notes and said, "Oh! Right! For some reason, I had it in my head that you were a full-time writer!"

That was pretty cool, too.

I'm going out dancing with friends tonight; maybe I'll take along a few of my "author" cards and introduce myself as an erotic romance writer/editor. It's definitely a better conversation starter than "QA manager".