So…I’m an Author Now!

In case you missed it in all of the incessant blogging I’m doing about it, I wrote this book.  But what you don’t know is the author copy was Fed-Exed to me at the end of last week and I got to hold a book in my hands that I wrote from cover to cover.  It’s small, but it’s mine.  I finally had something I wrote PUBLISHED!  I’m sort of dizzy writing that.

I wrote from the time I can remember.  I have journals dating back to my freshman year in high school (which I refuse to read because it’s still too painful to see the immature hormonal me!).  I wrote a daily journal from high school until I got engaged.   I also wrote a series of short stories that I dreamed of getting published by the New Yorker.  I think I always wanted to have something published – an article, a children’s book, a short story, the what it was changed over time. Then once I was married, the habitat of rolling over to chronicle the days events in my daily journal turned into rolling over to kiss my hubby.  So there’s virtually nothing written by me from 2006 to 2010.  I have saved a few emails that highlight big life events.  But the triplets joined us in October 2009.  So by the Fall of 2010 I realized I had to write again.  Just to remember what they were doing.

And that turned into this.  And this blog turned into a She Speaks event for which I submitted two book proposals – one a marriage preparation devotional and one a book for working women about balancing success and their faith.  Simultaneously, my mentor said the Commission on Women wanted to publish a book about leadership.  I offered to write it.  And Learning to Lead was born.  A year after my first meeting with the Commission presenting the book outline I am holding a copy of my first (hopefully of many) book!!!

Here’s the details:

The book releases August 9th at the Commission on Women’s annual meeting where I will be flying to San Francisco to see more than one copy in one place;

It will sell exclusively on their website from August until likely the end of the year as it takes some time to get the book and e-book processed by Amazon and they had a super fast turn around on the publication (my last edit was June 12th and I was holding the book on July 25th!):  http://www.ambar.org/LearningToLead ;

I’m getting to go speak to people about leadership and the book which is one of the best parts – I so enjoy speaking with and getting to know new groups of women.  Today I will be speaking to high school girls at a leadership academy, but the speaking engagements really kick off in the fall;

The book is small and is published by the Commission on Women – it’s just over 120 pages and as I say in the book, “when you use words like distill and practical and efficient for an audience of working women, brevity is key.”

I am so incredibly thankful for all the love and support and texts and emails I’ve gotten from my amazing friends as that’s part of this story too – having a support system to remind you to kick it into gear when you are just fried.  My mom always believed I could write a dozen books and that completely unrealistic assessment of my talent helped too.  Ultimately, it was God.  God orchestrating timing and opportunities and connections and life changes.   I hope in the end that He gets the credit for doing more than I could have ever imagined, in every facet of my life.  It all comes back to the verse that I have clung to for years:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every familyin heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Ephesians 3