Tomorrow THE LAST TIME WE SAY GOODBYE is on the shelves. I have nervous stomach. This is normal. Usually it feels like Christmas Eve at book launch; I'm excited that the day has finally arrived, and nervous to see if readers will respond to it, and thrilled to see the real book on a real shelf in a real bookstore. Usually at this point I'm swimming in newly-purchased swag, exhausted by all the blog tour stuff I've been writing (one year, I think it was with HALLOWED, I actually wrote nearly 20,000 words worth of interview/marketing stuff in the weeks leading up to publication. Good grief--that is like 1/4 of a book!) determined to enjoy the day (which to me means a mani-pedi, lunch out, and a trip to the bookstore to see the book in the wild), and just slightly nauseated.
But this book feels different.
Last night I had a dream that I was backstage. I spent my high school and college years as an actress in local theaters, so this is a typical dream of mine. It usually goes like this: I'm backstage, nervous, and then I go out there and either a) can't remember my lines and have to improv the whole play (which I suck at, btw) or b) go out there and get that beautiful-and-slightly-out-of-control high of simply letting myself go. That's when the magic happens. I perform, but it doesn't feel like performing. It feels like me.
You can tell I miss the theater.
In last night's dream, I was waiting backstage in that cozy blackness with the smell of sawdust and hairspray, waiting, waiting, for the show to begin. I took my place at center stage, and the curtain rose. Slowly. There was a huge crowd out there in the dark, the biggest crowd I'd ever seen. A spotlight flared up on me. Silence fell over the crowd. And I felt. . .
Naked. Not physically naked (although I'm sure I've had those dreams, too, gah), but naked in the way that all of those people had come and bought their tickets to see ME. Just me. Standing there in front of them. No lines. It wasn't that I'd forgotten them so much as there were no lines, in this play. No costumes. No makeup or fancy hairstyles. Just me.
And I had a choice: improv (which remember, I suck at) or let go.
I took a deep breath, and woke up.
It's hard to describe how vivid the dream was, or how perfectly it captured what I'm feeling now, as I wait for February 10 to arrive, the day of my book, this book that I put so much of my heart (and tears) into.
Tomorrow.
