You can do it!

I am a product of ABC After School Specials. Remember them? (If you're too young to know them, keep it to yourself!) One in particular stays with me. The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon. To this day, 30 years later, my best friend and I encourage each other by saying, "You can do it, Duffy Moon!"

That's how I feel today. I just got a wonderful blurb from Elyse Singleton, author of This Side of the Sky, a writer I deeply admire, so I'm over the (Duffy) moon with joy! (Read a Q&A with Elyse, Colorado Book Award Winner, here.)

The blurb: "Orange Mint and Honey is sweet fun-yet also a socially-conscious page-turner about accountability and forgiveness. In this memorable story of a once-derelict mother and a profoundly wounded daughter, rage, sadness, and humor jump off the page and grip us to the end. Author Carleen Brice has woven her talent for story-telling into a funny, sad, and perceptive novel that speaks to all of us who navigate less-than-perfect-relationships with parents or children. Therefore, it may speak to all of us."

I went to hear Elyse read at the Tattered Cover when her book came out. I still remember the advice she gave writers that night, "Enjoy the process." I knew she was right, but I still thought, Easy for you to say now that you're published! And I remember wondering would I ever get there with my first novel. And now I am, and I REALLY know she was right. There's kind of no "there" there with publishing. You never really cross the finish line. You get an agent. Yay! You get a publisher. Yay! The book comes out. Yay! You get good reviews (I hope). Yay! You break your neck to make it sell and it sells however many copies it sells and it's on to the next book. The saying, "It's not the destination. It's the journey," while cliche is true.

To you other writers out there who are working on your first novel, wondering if you'll ever get "there," my advice: Enjoy the process and You can do it Duffy Moon!