The corners of my mouth ached from smiling so hard at the photo of my face peering up at me from inside the book flap. "That's me," I said in a squeak. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I refused to let them fall or else I'd be a scary mascara mess of chaos.

I didn't need that. Not before I was hurled before a thousand people where I was supposed to look "put together" and not like the hyperactive, distractible and ungraceful author that I ACTUALLY was. I didn't want to become a meme, or a boomerang on someone's Instagram page in a permanent edition of author fails.

I heard my agent, Sanders laugh from where she stood behind me. She was grinning from ear to ear, holding the rest of the copies of my book in a large box. "You DO realize that is where an author's face tends to hang out when they make a book happen," she said with an amused snort.

My hands shook as I held my writing— my mind in my fingers, pressing them harder to the book as I attempted to process the magic of the moment. "I wrote this." I blinked, half expecting the book to disappear in between my blinks.