Well, this giraffe has been a busy beaver (now there’s a visual for you). This week has been all about the blook. As things move along I’m becoming more and more aware that this is actually happening. The big news is that the cover design has been finalized and now just needs some minor tweaking here and there. I must say it’s not at all what I first imagined but I think it’s a winner. And no, I’m not showing you yet so stop looking at me like that. You crowd have already read most of the book so I have to keep a few surprises in store.

It’s all so surreal. I talk to my editor (she’s a sweetheart) on the phone and we hammer out this detail and that detail but I still have no concept of this coming to pass, a theme that has emerged in my life ever since I turned it upside down. I haven’t read the book since early December and for all I know it’s a nightmare. But I don’t care. If I start reading it now I know I’ll go all medieval on it, plundering and pillaging it from start to finish. It’s a sickness this compulsive need to change. So it’s best that I leave that file untouched. It is what it is.

We’re on track for a mid-April release and I’m not sure what’s more exciting to me about returning to Canada, having a launch for a book I wrote or stuffing myself with sour cream until it seeps from my pores. Yesterday I realized that I was planning my whole trip back to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia around food. I knew I’d hit rock bottom when I had my editor checking on my favourite Mexican restaurant, Zapata’s in St. John’s (still open, Olé!). God love her.

At any rate now I have to prepare for the vulgar business of self promotion. I can barely survive getting my picture taken so I have no idea where to begin for this mess. Hey Everybody! Look at me! Buy my book! I am so worth your hard earned money! If you don’t buy my book I’ll starve in the street! Yuck. I suppose the first step would be to learn how to be dressed in real clothes on a regular basis. I’ve already made a start on that front. I broke down and bought myself a pair of Fly London boots for the Great Canadian Charade of Confidence and Style.

Apart from always having something green and leafy stuck in my teeth (or worse on my face), I can dress myself. I think so, who can remember? But I still have no friggin’ clue what I’m at or what I’m in for with all this. I imagine that I will somehow manage to make a right idiot of myself at every turn. And that’s just as it should be. I wouldn’t want something as small as a book to change me now would I?