The Surreal Life

So, I just got back from my lunch break. How did you spend your lunch break, Blogagaard? Shit man, thanks for asking! I hung around Cedar/Riverside getting my picture taken for a local newspaper article and feeling very much embarrassed! If you know me at all, you know I am not such a fan of pictures of myself in the first place. And now the coffee shop I usually go to knows my dirty writer secret! And for some reason I even gave the coffee shop owner my business card. Quite surreal. One more surreal event in a long list of such events since I've gotten my first novel. And now, without further ago, I give you my Getting Published is Fucking Surreal Top Ten List:

10. Returning to your hometown bookstore for a reading (Mankato).
9. That day my car wouldn't start and I jog-walked 3 frozen miles uphill to speak to a high school English classes at the St. Paul academy. Obviously, i arrived very sweaty and fierce.
8. The first time you see your word document turned into an actually book, with cool fonts and everything.
7. That KFAI radio interview I did. That same day my car wouldn't start.
6. Knowing that there's an Italian speaking person out there working on translating my book as we speak. Weird.
5. Having a full-time temp job, which I started the same week my book came out, and having said temp job lead to the reading I did at the U of MN.
4. That college girl who came to my Edina reading and made me sign something to prove she'd attended my reading. And she also took a picture with me. Then she said she didn't like to read but wanted to be a writer because she had all these stories in her head.
3. Getting that great Washington Post review.
2. Signing books for people with my fifth-grade-like signature. That's totally surreal.
1. When Stan lee sent me my own book, autographed with a congratulatory message.