And then, an acceptance letter...

How quickly the tides turned!

I'm so thrilled that the Briar Cliff Review has accepted my essay for publication. I'd submitted it to a nonfiction contest, which it didn't win, but it was a finalist. Most importantly, they want to publish it. I'm going to be published!

When I got the news, Mom and I were Christmas shopping in the cities. I stood in a flower shop we love, reading my email on my phone. "The Briar Cliff Review wants to publish my essay," I told Mom. "That's good news, but I need you to look at this ribbon right now - will it go in my bedroom?"

Yep. Mom keeping me humble.

The essay is about my brother and me and our vastly different relationships to the same element: wood. I finished it on his 40th birthday. I let Jeff read the essay before I submitted it. He disappeared for a good hour and then shouted up from the basement, "Good work, Amy." It's hard and a little scary to share these kinds of insights and emotions with someone. I'm glad he liked it. When I called to tell him the essay was accepted, he told the guys at work on the construction site to quit hammering and shut off the saws so he could hear all the details. THAT's brotherly excitement.

The issue with my essay will publish in May 2013. My next big task (after the holiday playing rush is over) will be to head back to this laptop and finish some other essay-poetry-memoir ideas I started back in late October. One of them will be a flash nonfiction piece. I've never written flash anything, but I think it will be a good challenge.

My immediate task will be to toast the Muse of Acceptance Letters with a little bottle of (very cheap, very crappy, but it does the trick) champagne.