Okay, I have to say that this week has been off to a good start 🙂 This morning I was scrolling through the Publishers Weekly reviews (as I do every Monday morning hoping to spot good reviews for friends) when I saw my name, my title, and a STAR!! Seriously, I clapped my hands over my mouth and started screaming and laughing with pure joy/excitement/relief/amazement/shock — you name it and I was probably feeling it!  

And then, just as I’m starting to calm down a bit, I heard a knock at the door and it was the FedEx man with a package from Random House. Inside, a copy of my book. My real book — finished, done. Like, what will be going on the shelves in 35 days.

Wow! What a great morning!!  I can’t wait for JP to come home so we can celebrate (and finally pop that bottle of champagne left over from new years 🙂

Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly review:

Mary’s village has been trapped for generations by a very near, very visible menace: the Unconsecrated—insatiable, flesh-eating zombies that constantly tear at the village’s fences. Yet the Sisterhood—a conventlike order of religious women charged to protect the village’s survival—is as much responsible for the submission of Mary’s village as the Unconsecrated. When the fences are breached and the village overrun, Mary and several others escape through gated paths and arrive deep into the Forest of Hands and Teeth, forced to search beyond it for their future. Mary’s observant, careful narration pulls readers into a bleak but gripping story of survival and the endless capacity of humanity to persevere. That Mary maintains emotional distance serves to render her yearnings and romantic feelings even more poignant and powerful. Fresh and riveting.

 

And here’s a picture of The Boss with a copy of my finished real book — he approves, thankfully!  (we all know that The Boss can be quite persnickety about his likes and dislikes!)