done, Done, DONE!

Coffee in the Atlanta skyline mug, "Elephant Love Medley" from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack on iTunes. D'ja miss me? I spent last week on a boat, uh, 'ship', floaty thingie in the Caribbean. Details coming up on Stranded in the South. Now I am back in the studio, Rested and Relaxed with the worst behind me. The book is all over but the shouting, the BMAC is done, and I live!

The Saturday we left for vacation I was still frantically copy editing at the Tampa airport while waiting for the bus to take us to the ship. Then I was copy editing on the bus. Then I was copy editing on the ship and getting the wireless internet connection set-up so I could send my edits. Then I was... done. It was a strange, unsettling experience to go from months of full throttle to a dead stop. But I got over it--the little rum drinks they kept bringing around helped. Oh yes, and I can continue to soak up the sun as I do not have basal cell carcinoma! My growth was benign.

Tomorrow I will get the final version of the manuscript which has now been edited by the senior editor. I get to review it, but I have already been warned that I do not get to make any changes to what she has written unless she has changed the sense of the content so that it is wrong. Apparently her word is law, and the way she wants it to read goes. Whatever. I am so done with this project! This afternoon a photographer is doing my portrait for the book jacket, and I still have a couple of odds and sods to send the art department before they begin the assembly of all the materials into the final product, but, did I say done?, it's done, done, done!!!

This week it's time to wrap up the taxes. But I do not dread this task. No, this week and all the weeks stretching ahead are not over-stuffed. I have FINALLY come out On The Other Side and am settling nicely back into the work of a studio glass artist. Got some shows to plan, new work to design and price, web pages and Wholesalecrafts.com start-up to do, orders to fill from the BMAC, a mailing to put out to drum up more orders--just the regular day-to-day--and I couldn't be happier! I am also finally looking forward to the book coming out, and I FINALLY feel it will be a good one that I am proud to have my name on. Of course that is before I see what the senior editor has done to it.

Now off to the regular Monday ikebana, followed by catching up on a week's communications and then to be shot (with a camera).