My novel is here!

This will be a fairly short and possibly incomprehensible entry, for which I apologise, but I couldn’t let this moment pass without sharing it with the world. This morning the post lady knocked smartly on our door and delivered (unbeknownst to her) a package that I have been waiting for all my life.

For there, inside a Panmacmillan envelope, was a gorgeous copy of the hardback of The Chosen Queen - my very own novel, published for real, under the pen name, Joanna Courtney, a name that I first spoke about writing under as a young girl.

I am sitting at my desk now with the novel propped up before me and my heart feels as if it might (in time-honoured tradition) burst with the joy of it. It’s been a long, hard, often tearful slog to get to this point but I’d do it all again, three times over, to hold this – 395 pages of novel, wrapped up in a beautifully designed matt cover with shiny golden borders and my name on the front. I may cry. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t cried already!

Enough. I must stop myself here or I will gush embarrassingly, so let me conclude with a huge thank you to everyone who’s helped me get this far (you’re listed in the book) and a simple message to those writers who who haven’t quite made it yet: If you’re still climbing the hill, keep going, cos it feels fabulous when you get there.

Of course I still have to set foot on the huge path to actually selling copies, but I think for now, on this lovely day, I’ll just take a moment or two to enjoy the view from here.