News! Book to be Published Soon

It seems the most precious things are also the most fragile and closest to our hearts, so we protect them and keep them hidden away. What have you not told the world? What do you think you don't know about anyone else that might be absolutely phenomenal? Why are we keeping all of these mysteries and closeted skeletons which are truly harmful to none?

 

Mine is the book. 

I planned to be a writer and a published author from the age of seven, and in some ways, I have been that for years, but not in the way I was thinking. I was thinking of authoring books, books that people would read and enjoy and dwell on for years to come. (Never very ambitious, was I?) I was also going to be a nun, a doctor in a tropical country, mother of anywhere from 6 to 12 children, and an actor. There was some cycling and remixing along the way, as I remind my children, this is normal and you WILL change your mind at some point, so keep your options open.

As to the writing, magazine articles and blog posts did not seem to count, although, over 1000 blog posts in, I can now say this counts for something. There are so many blogs all of you writers write that tilt our perception of the world just a mite or a lot, and I thank you for writing them and acknowledge the beauty and the importance of all we have collectively written since the genre began.

As for the manuscript...I may have mentioned almost being finished with this first book at some point in a blog post, but not with much conviction. Talking about it seemed to be too risky, what if it never gets read, what if I wasted years of my existence on a completely futile, ridiculous endeavor, what if it is...worst of all...boring?! Here is my announcement, world: 

Yesterday, the second editing, post-beta readers, was completed. Wait, that needs a few exclamation points!!!  

It is finished! And it is NOT BORING. 

We begin with an intercontinental trip with seven people gone wrong, and it just keeps getting more exotic from there. It is a memoir, part dream, plans, aspirations, growth and reality.

There will be more improvements, and solicitations have been answered for one more read-through by a second set of readers before I hit "publish" for real, but I am 90% certain that I will self-publish this and let it go out into the world and greet it without the fanfare of finding an agent, hosting a publisher-sponsored launch party and hoping for the New York Times bestseller list within the first month. 

The title is "Surfboards and Soybeans" subtitle suggestions welcome! I have considered, "Raising a Bilingual Family in a Multicultural World," "From Iowa to France and Back Again", "Buckets of Snails and Spinach", and "90 Days and 14 Years in France". The story is that of a trip to France in 2010 where all went wrong when a volcano blew up on the way there, intermingled with our family's story of raising five children in two languages and over two continents in a multitude of cultures. 

I believe I published this blog post two months ago, then chickened out and set it back to "draft". For heaven's sake. I am going to put it back up again. Let me know if you would like to buy a copy. I will let you know where to find it.