The Eve of Something

I have been trying to find the right word for what this week feels like.

Excited doesn’t quite cover it. Neither does nervous, though both are true. What keeps surfacing is something harder to name…a compound feeling, several things sitting in the same space at once, not canceling each other out but somehow all being true simultaneously.

Excited. Anxious. Hopeful. Relieved. Proud.

Relieved, especially. That one surprised me.

I think relief is what happens when something you have been quietly carrying for a long time finally gets to be put down and shared. The Triquetra Chronicles has lived inside me, in some form, for longer than I can fully account for. The first book began with a real experience, a glimpse of something I couldn’t un-see. The second arrived before the first had even found its footing. The third is already pulling at me before the second has had its official debut.

These stories don’t wait for permission. They insist.

And now, after everything that has gone into getting here…the writing and the rewriting, the editing, the cover design, the late Wednesdays, the moments of doubt, the moments of unexpected grace…we are two days away from June 6.

The Big OH Book Con. Medina, Ohio. A half table among a room full of authors, most of whom no one has heard of yet. Including me.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There is something clarifying about starting exactly where you are. Not where you wish you were, not where you might be someday, but here. Two books in the world. A third already breathing. A table that is mine to fill with everything I’ve got.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what it means to show up for something you believe in before the world has confirmed that it should believe too. That’s the position every artist is in, everytime. You go first. You say this matters before you have proof that anyone else agrees.

The proof comes later. Or it doesn’t. But you go first anyway.

I believe in this series. I believe in the women it’s written for. I believe that the reader who needs it is out there, and that some of them will find their way to a table in Medina, Ohio on June 6th, and pick up a book, and feel something they have been waiting to feel for a long time.

That belief doesn’t waver. Even on the anxious days. Even on the quiet ones.

So here we are. The eve of something.

The books are packed. The table is almost ready. My daughter helped me get it all together this week, which felt right in a way I didn’t expect. At one point she stopped, holding a copy of The Harbinger with the finalist sticker she had just applied and said quietly: “I can’t believe I’m holding a book that my mom wrote.”

Neither can I, sometimes. Neither can I.

If you’re going to be at the Big OH Book Con this weekend, come find me. I’ll be the one with the owl and the raven and two books that have been waiting a long time to meet you.

And if you’re not…the story finds its way. It always does.

That’s what I keep coming back to.

It always does.