Advanced Copies of my book!!!!

Yesterday I arrived home from work to find that my boyfriend had left a large box from FedEx the entryway. It's addressed to me. Hmm... What have I ordered recently? About a Son DVD. Nope, box is way too big. Business cards? Again, too big. Okay, I also ordered 1000 promo bookmarks. This box still seems to be too big, but it's either that or someone sent me a present. Box label says something about printing. I guess it is bookmarks. Ooh, but this seems a little heavy.... Could it be???? No, my editor said no ARCs until the end of March. But I hurry to open the box nonetheless and I find:


Rush upstairs to email editor and thank her for not warning me of this. Best surprise ever and the boost I needed for what I know will be a hard weekend (today is the birthday of a friend who passed away last fall). In the midst of typing the email to editor, email from agent about something else pops up. I reply to her quickly, adding, Ohmigod ARCs are here! In the middle of this I am calling boyfriend to excitedly tell him to hurry home and see the books. Agent hasn't gotten her ARCs yet, she wants to know what they look like. I struggle to take a cell phone photo of my book with shaking hands and send it to her and a bunch of other people. My cell phone is being a bastard. The message only sends to half the people and this is after multiple tries. I give up, I will email the rest of the people tomorrow after I blog about it and post proper pictures. Besides Scott's home. He needs to see the books and help me take decent pictures. And I need to call my mom and tell her to come over tomorrow and pick up her book. Then, Katie is on G-chat. Gotta tell Katie, she's been the writing partner in crime for so long.

Okay, deep breaths. Supposed to meet Amber for dinner in an hour, it's time to shower and such. Going to have to put the book down to do that. I get ready and put the book in my purse. Text Kathy that she needs to definitely stop by Cobra so she can see the book. At Cobra, I get to show off the book to Amber and her fiance and Kathy and her boyfriend.

I bring the book up to the bedroom before bed and Scott says, "Are you going to sleep with it?" And I say, "No, because you'd make fun of me." But I sit and stare at the book for a while. I hadn't noticed somehow that on the back in huge letters, it calls me a "brilliant debut novelist." I point this out to Scott, he says, "Well, why wouldn't it? It's the truth." (He can finally honestly say this because he finished reading the book last week when he helped me go through the page proofs. Oh, I should mention that is the other reason I didn't expect the ARCs so soon because I just sent in the page proofs a week ago, but I guess I proofed the pages as they appear in the ARC, so yeah, anyone who gets this ARC, I know about all of the typos!)I page through the book for a few more minutes in awe before Scott goes, "Can I turn the light out now?" I begrudgingly put my book (wow, my book) down since he does have to work early.

I wake up before his alarm and immediately pick up my book. I'll be carrying it around all day with me. Maybe all week.
Here are some up-close shots of it that Scott took (my hands were too shaky to do it without blurring). The cover will look exactly like that when you go to find it in the bookstore this July (except for the whole advanced copy disclaimer on top), but on the back all the marketing stuff will be gone and you'll get to see a little picture of me and also a nice little blurb from Melissa Marr.





Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!