GETTING "THE CALL"

For most writers, getting THE CALL may be the single most monumental moment of their lives.

Yeah, yeah...meeting the man of your dreams, getting married, having babies....all happy happy happy. Blah blah blah. (Sorry, honey!)

But THE CALL….

That’s something else altogether. That's the stuff dreams are made of. That’s what you’ve been working toward...the moment you know you’ve actually made it.

A lot of people talk about the moment they got “THE CALL.”

Me, I didn’t get the call. I got “the message.” And actually, I didn’t get the message, my husband did.

My agent had warned me something was up after I'd run into her at a conference in LA (which coincidentally is also the first time she actually remembers meeting me!). She told me that she got a voicemail, and that she might have “some news” for me. Of course, she quickly followed that up with, we might not know for sure what that news is until next week because she's at this conference, and the editor who contacted her is out of the office until Monday.

Nice.

Plus, here's the thing: "Some news" could be just about anything, right?

So, here's how it went down in my head: They read it, loved it, and want to make a HUGE pre-empt offer on it. I mean, that happens, right?

But an entire weekend needs to pass before things come together and I have to hope to God no one’s dog dies over that weekend, because a crappy mood could be the kiss of death.

(Seriously, you guys, am I the only tortured writer out there?)

So as we cut to the next week, I head off on a planned camping trip with the family. And by “camping” I'm not talking about the roughing-it kind of camping. I mean we have a fully equipped trailer, complete with shower, microwave, air-conditioning, and flat screen kind of camping. I am so not the “roughing-it” kind of girl.

At this point, my nails are chewed to nubs that I desperately hope will grow back one day, and I’m permattached to my cell phone. I’ve taken to checking it every five minutes to make sure it’s on, and every ten for new voicemails.

Fun times!

That Tuesday, we decide to take the kids to a water park and spend the day in the near-hundred degree sun, and somehow, for the briefest of time, I manage to forget I'm supposed to be on pins-and-needles. When we get back, my husband calls our home phone to check messages. And then he gets this look on his face (with really wide, crazy eyes), and he yells, “You got it! You got an offer!”

I was laying down on the bed, and I swear it took me far too long to process any of what he'd said or why he was jumping up and down (in a really manly way, of course). He hands me the phone and lets me listen to the message, which I have to say, I’m not sure I even heard beyond: “We got an offer…”

I tried to call my agent back but it went straight to her voicemail. At this point, I didn’t even know what the offer was, but, hell, who cared?

I HAD AN OFFER!!!!


I think I might have cried, I’m not sure. I know that I screamed. And I definitely know I jumped up and down with my husband and my kids. And then, out of nowhere, there was a sign that the kids made for me ahead of time, and a card, and some really warm champagne that my husband had packed (just in case)!

We drank the toasty bubbly out of plastic cups and we talked about the what-ifs, and I think I said “I can’t believe it” about a thousand times.

And quite possibly the best part of the entire night was that we were all together. All five of us in our ridiculously busy family just happened to be in the same place, at the same time, when I got THE CALL.

Definitely the stuff dreams are made of!