It’s really happening

My life is insane. Let me set the scene.

My week starts on Friday. At 2:30 in the afternoon, I leave my cute little apartment’s garage to drive the three minutes to the garage under my restaurant. I then spend about 20 minutes doing my daily tarot readings, looking at my horoscope, and writing paragraphs from the next six books in a totally random and disconnected order. I take some deep breaths. Listen to David Bowie. Check my lipstick.

And then the chaos begins.

If you like to dine out, you might have some idea of how the whole process works. Get seated, water (still, sparkling, or iced?), pick out a fun cocktail, apps, entrees, debate on and then indulge in dessert, then roll on home, (hopefully) satisfied.

Now imagine all the people who are a part of that process.

Hosts. Serving assistants (water, clearing the table). Server. Bar team. The food runners. A manager or two who check in and make polite small talk. And that’s just the people you see. Prep, garde manger, line cook, sous chef, chef, pastry chef. It’s a crazy life with too many moving parts, and here I am, a romance writer, looking at every detail and filing it all away. Every interaction is material. 10-12 hours of this, over and over, and I’ve got my little corner of the garage and I type, type, type.

Tuesday night is my “Friday,” and when I tell you I’m loopy at that point, please understand that my fatigue has ended in a real-life occurrence of falling into a trash can of guacamole.

And all of this coincides with my first novel, All the Way Happy. coming out in two freaking months. It really is happening.

And I really did think, back then before I wrote this book, “Is this all there is?” Now, 3:00 in the morning, my feet on fire, my mouth tired from talking, my brain full of details I’m trying not to forget, I think, “How is there so darn much?”

I needed to learn how to be all the way happy, because I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know that being a restaurant manager was this thrilling, that moving back into Baltimore would make my heart so glad, that my words could actually get published and read by anyone other than my mother, my partner, and my best friend.

All the Way Happy turned my life upside down. It created the insanity that is my life. This little book engendered massive change. So I’m going to keep going on this crazy path, and I’m going to write in the garage, and I’m going to run dinner service, and I’m going to eat lavish early morning meals with my dramatic and mad-culinary-genius partner.

I’m going to write love stories and I’m going to make memories.

And that’s just the way it is.