27th January 2016

So – who new…an ARC is an Advanced Readers Copy – books that get sent out to important people in the media who will (?) read, love and promote them. This is my 8th book, but the first time ever a publisher has decided to invest in the ARC. 150 Time To Take Flight are now winging their way around the world (…well, maybe not the world, but at least within North America) in the hope that someone with influence, (and not just my friends who are being kind), will offer nice words in magazines, blogs, Twitter feeds, radio and TV (yes Oprah – I’m talking to you). The publishers have a great gal to send all these copies out and she has already secured a radio interview with CBC Alberta, when interested individuals will call me and ask questions during the lunchtime talk show. She emailed to tell me she was excited. So am I.

Today was the first time I saw the book as ‘a book’ – with a front and back cover, numbered pages, ISBN number, not just white pages of manuscript. I want to sleep with it. I want not to open it and bend back the pages. I want to sit in a coffee shop with it on a table and some stranger ask where they could get a copy. But along with the excitement comes a great apprehension. What if no one buys it and Touchwood (the publishers) get left with 4,000 unsold copies and a debt and I am left explaining how I wrote a book that bombed. I have to keep reminding myself that I have had more fun writing this than I have writing anything else. It has more of me than any of the other texts and as you get older, and I am getting a lot older, increasingly I seek tasks that make me contented. Writing Time to Take Flight has made me very happy. Writing is a fantastic vehicle for reflection, for rationalising actions and for understanding yourself. Therefore if it doesn’t sell I will not regret the time, energy or effort.

So many people tell me they would like to write. Numerous girlfriends have told me story lines they have crafted in their heads for works they would like to pen. Everyone should try it.