Aurelia's Song

Countdown to Exile--6 days!


“Hi, Aurelia,” I say, piling my current edited draft of my upcoming fourth book, Salvation, on top of last weekend’s edited draft.

“My book is coming out. My book is coming out. My book is coming out,” she sings, dancing around the room to The Music Box Dancer.

“Yes,” I sigh.

“Something wrong?” she pauses, her skirt swishing around her, an expression on her face which says that clearly nothing is allowed to go wrong when her book is coming out.

“Just thinking about final rehearsals all week for The Taming of the Shrew,” I say. Final rehearsals are always my most stressful week of the year.

“They’ll go fine,” she says.

As I said, nothing can go wrong in her opinion right now.

“The Oregon Book Awards are next Monday night!” she adds. And starts spinning again. “Aerin and Dane are all excited about going.”

“Yes.” I manage a weak smile, thinking about the eight hours I’m going to spend in the car between school on Monday and school on Tuesday in order to attend the Monday night awards ceremony.

“And the Portland Writing Festival is coming up in early May!” She spins faster.

I need to prepare a forty minute speech for the festival and find a way to feed thirteen children at least three meals for two days. “Yes.” My voice gets weaker.

“And you’re presenting at Highland Hills Elementary in between!”

“I believe so.”

“And then there’s--”

“OK!” I shout.

She stops and stares at me.

But I keep going. “And I have a newsletter to type and interviews to complete and Goodreads messages to answer and bills to pay and a car headlight to fix and event updates to send to my editor and web designer. And followers to track down—since the pictures of all 117 of them have apparently disappeared from my blog. And--”

“Is Salva giving you a hard time?” She eyes the manuscript I’ve just set down.

He doesn’t want to go on a date, but I’m hopeful that he, Beth, and I can work our way around this before June.

“I’m just . . . a little overwhelmed,” I admit.

She shakes her head, then smiles and I know exactly what words are going to come out of her mouth. “My book is coming out,” she whispers.