Here I am signing my first for-real-not-kidding coming in 2017 publishing contract! The road to this point has been ... I want to say, "Oh, I always knew this day would come!" But that statement is so incredibly far from the truth. In many ways the path to this moment has been long, grueling, painful. More than a decade, hundreds of rejection letters (all of which I've kept including a bizarre one that said something about the success of Sponge Bob depending on a lack of irony), an MFA. The journey has not been what I expected. At all. I expected to start with Young Adult literature, but here I am, signing a picture book into print. I expected for some literary equivalent of a talent scout to pick up my very first unsolicited manuscript and fall in love. Instead it has taken years of skill-building, relationship-honing, prayer-saying. I've had to lose some, no - a lot - of idealism and starry-eyed-naievite about the industry, so when a friend congratulates me with, "Rebecca, you've made it!" I can only think, Made it? This is just the beginning.

The road to this point has also been something else. Joyous. That sweet feeling of knowing I'm doing what I love, even when I hate it, can't be matched. So I'll enjoy the moment. For a moment. Before I start to wonder, worry, fret about the question, "So what's next?"