Relationship is a State of Mind

I'm always amused when I hear nouns used as verbs. "Let's coffee tomorrow." or "I'm going to office from home today." And of course the now-infamous "I googled him before we went out."

Then I started to hear, "I'm in relationship." Excuse me? In relationship? Isn't there an "a" missing, as in "in a relationship?"

But I realized that, no, it was true. Relationship is not just a state of being, a state of couplehood versus singlehood. It's a state of mind, too.

I know, this coming from the girl who met her husband-to-be just before high school graduation, got engaged to him a year later, and married him a year into graduate school. In fact, we just celebrated our 16th anniversary. Over 20 years together, I've known Husby longer than I didn't know him. It's a cool milestone to pass. We're in relationship.

I also just finished reading Amy Cohen's The Late Bloomer's Revolution and sent off my interview questions for her blog tour.

If I'd seen the book in a bookstore, or even in the library, I probably would have passed on it for one simple reason: relationship. And I would have missed a great book.

It's a memoir, a sometimes heart-rending, sometimes exhilarating, always funny account of looking for love but not quite finding it. And as a long-time married woman, with kids no less, I wasn't quite sure if I'd see any of myself in this book.

Boy, was I wrong. Because it's not just about being single or being married. It's about - all together now - relationship. It's about how you see yourself and how you project that to others. It's about how much you love yourself (without going overboard) being the measure of how much another can love you. It's about coming to terms with who you are and where you come from and using it all to take risks to grow and change. It's about life.

I suppose dead people might not get that much from reading it, but I recommend it to everyone living. Especially if you're in relationship, or looking to be.

Being a Packrat Pays Off

I went looking in the garage for a second broom just now.

Oldest and Youngest sons decided to have a Spaghetti Fling in the kitchen last night, and after scraping limp pasta off the front of the dishwasher and picking it out of the mudroom rug, I decided they would spend today doing chores. After washing walls, chairs, doorjambs, and the toilet (they're closer to it, and besides, they're boys - they get it dirtier), I figured they'd be less likely to redecorate my kitchen again anytime in the near future.

So their last chore was to sweep the outside walkway from the back door to the back gate. Hence, I needed two brooms.

This should not have been a problem. We have four. But three are apparently missing, perhaps eaten by the nocturnal garage-dwelling Broom Monster.

At any rate, that's not what this post is about. Because as I was searching for the now MIA broom, I found a piece to an old baby gate that we replaced with a new version of the same thing and use to keep the dog off the back deck. Until now, we've been wedging the gate closed in a creative fashion that the dog can't - yet - figure out. But with this piece I found in lieu of the broom, we can actually lock the gate closed now!

See, there is a reason to keep anything that just might be useful at some point in the future. Now if I could only find those brooms...

Late Bloomer Blogger?

So cool. I received an email recently from author Amy Cohen's publicist, asking if I'd participate in Amy's blog tour for her new book, The Late Bloomer's Revolution.

Of course!

I know firsthand how important creating that WOM-BUZZ is. WOM-BUZZ, which makes me think of wombats, is a publishing industry acronym standing for Word Of Mouth Buzz, and basically means doing everything possible (generally legal) to get Lots of People talking and writing about Your Book.

So, I am reading


The Late Bloomer's Revolution, and loving it!

By Monday, I plan to have an interview with the author, Amy Cohen, herself.

And if that wasn't enough, in the next week or so I'll be posting a review of The Optimistic Jew by Tsvi Bisk.

So stick around... things here are heating up!

I Miss New York

New York was amazing. Just... yeah. Amazing.

One week on my own without kids, pets, spouse, bills, ringing telephone... and five awesome days in the company of other authors and publishers and book people where we mutually supported and encouraged and applauded each others efforts.

Ahhh...

And now I'm home and Oldest Son is out of school and Youngest Son is into everything and Husby is working lots of overtime and... did I mention I miss New York?

Looking forward to next time. And Shira, you can bet I'll call when I'm in the neighborhood again!

I Never Knew There Was So Much I Never Knew

Turns out I may be a techie (as far as that goes; I couldn't hold a candle to Husby the technogod), but there ARE limits. Blogging on a Palm TX with a small folding IR keyboard and a dodgy wifi connection is truly an exercise in patience.

So I'm blogging about my book/author/publisher experiences at the MIPA site:
http://mipa-blog.blogspot.com

I hope you'll come check it out. Meanwhile, I'm celebrating the recent milestones in my weeklong stay here: seeing Times Square when it's not nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, giving someone else directions (ha!) and riding the subway for the first time.

It's nice when the little things satisfy me.

Start Spreading the News...

I leave for NYC tomorrow to attend PMA University (think college for publishers) and BEA - Book Expo America - the largest English-speaking book trade show in the world.

The plan (yeah, right) is that I'll take a few minutes each evening to blog about the events of the day, with a few highlights from the classes I'm attending. More details from the classes will come after I return home and catch up on a week of missed sleep.

You can follow along with what I'm learning as both an author and a publisher on either of two different blogs:

Yaldah Publishing (of course), at
http://yaldah-publishing.blogspot.com

and the MIPA (Midwest Independent Publishers Association) blog at
http://mipa-blog.blogspot.com

Next check-in from New York!

Still Alive...

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. My many apologies for just dropping off the face of the earth. Casa Galyan has been under the weather lately, with sick kids, sick Husby, sick me. Honestly, I know they're teaching Oldest Son to share in kindergarten, but I'd rather he NOT share the viruses.

Much to share but I'm exhausted, which seems like par for the course lately.

The latest book news is that The Powers That Be decided that an early 2008 release would make more economic and marketing sense than a fall 2007 one. That bummed me. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that the book takes place in the weeks leading up to and during Chanukah. Marketing experts wanted to avoid having a book that was considered - in the publishing biz - already a year old come January. And a novel, I'm assured, can be released anytime.

So I'm taking advantage of that and not rushing into editing to get a galley out with minimum time. It also means that being either sick or caretaker (or both) was not a huge obstacle to overcome in the book timetable.

The exciting news is that I'll be attending Book Expo America in New York City from May 28-June 3. I've never been in New York City, and while I won't have a ton of time to sightsee, it'll be fun just to be there. Book Expo America (BEA) is the largest English-speaking book trade show in the world. Awesome experience!

More to come... I need to go sit and check my eyelids for light leakage.