I got it!

The Call.”

A two-book deal from a legitimate, advance-paying publisher.

My first two novels, contemporary Western romances, will be released in the spring and fall of 2010.

My wonderful agent met an editor at a conference, told her about my books, and the editor read them and loved them. And now, like the Velveteen Rabbit, I have become real.

When you’re a writer, publication seems like the top of the mountain, but I’m learning that there’s more to the mountain than the mountaintop. Don’t get me wrong. I’m gratefu. Ecstatic. I’m floating on a ridiculous pink cloud of euphoria, with singing bluebirds fluttering around my head and little forest animals dancing some ridiculous Walt Disney dance in adorable unison to a serenading all-animal oompah band in a sunshiney meadow.

Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway.

And I’m no longer writing into the void, creating characters that only live in my head, writing stories that only exist on the page, or in my computer’s inexplicable innards.

Lucky me!

But as I approached this goal, and became more and more immersed in the rewards of creating stories and characters, I started to wonder if it would ever happen. And as I faced rejection after rejection, it started to matter less and less. I realized nothing was going to make me stop writing.

Not even failure.

I’m thrilled to be one of the lucky ones that sees my stories in print. But I’m even luckier to have found what I was meant to do.

So if you have a feeling deep down that there’s something that will complete you, do it. Give up the high falutin’ job if you have to. Or, better yet, give up watching T.V. or even working out. Do what you love to do –what you need to do. Live your dream. Follow your passion.

(Dang–it’s hard to express this thought without resorting to clichés. Next I’ll be telling you to climb the magic rainbow and ride the frisky unicorn.)

There’s a book called Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow.” It’s full of wisdom and good advice. But chances are, if you do what you love, the money will run away screaming in the other direction.

Still, the soul-filling satisfaction of doing what you were meant to do is, in the immortal words of MasterCard, priceless.