The Big Announcement

Are you there Blogary? It’s me, Jill.

I’ve been holding out on you, Blogary. I’m paranoid about paperwork and contracts, and the blurry line between hope and reality that can only be made sharp by signatures in triplicate. I don’t have the math skills to count chickens before they hatch, or the energy to celebrate liberating them from factory farms before their little beaks grow sharp and they run the risk of pecking each other to death, silly chickens.

But no more, Blogary. Today is the day I can finally make the announcement I’ve kind of, deep down, been waiting five years to announce. Because I get ahead of myself, blogary. I’m anxious and keen and I want only to please you.

Here’s how I’ve spent those five years, Blogary:

• Writing a novel
• Quitting my job to run my own business while editing that novel.
• Finding an agent (La S) and editing that novel again.
• Almost getting that novel published, editing one more time, and then not getting it published after all.
• Writing another novel, this time with La S calling me every few day and banging her head against her desk trying to get me to focus on plot. (I’ve seen it, Blogary. There’s a slightly rounded dent in her desk. She has to wear a headband at all times, to hide the wood splinters and scarring in her forehead. It’s become her calling card, like a pirate’s eyepatch or Madonna’s sling after she fell of her horse that one time.)
• Editing that novel.
• Waiting.
• Declining social engagements to meet deadlines.
• Explaining the publishing industry to people at parties, in cars, at cottages, on my way to the bank, at the library, in my mother’s kitchen…
• Insisting I’m not crazy, and hoping I’m right.

And the result, Blogary? I am pleased to tell you that my Young Adult novel, Break On Through, about a teenage b-girl (breakdancer) whose life is RUINED when her parents announce they’re moving from Parkdale to the outer-suburbs of the GTA, will be published by Doubleday Canada (Random House) around this time next year, in what they refer to as “early Spring, 2008.”

It will be followed in 2009 by Rhythm & Blues (working title), a kind of spin-off about a commercial R&B group gone bad. That’s right Blogary, I get two books. Please don’t let me screw them up.

Sincerely,

Jill, a.k.a. 2-left