Journey after my novel.

It's been a year since my best selling novel took to the shelves of every bookstore, airport, bedroom, school campus and classroom. I'm sitting up late. All the lights are out and I"m mesmerized by the buzzing light of my computer. Like a fly I'm just a zombie to its' brightness. My email is open. I have other windows open as well.

I'm doing all I can to not open the emails from my grandmother title New York Times Review...Room runs out and it trails off. I can guess the rest, something alone the lines of it's a short but still impressive review hon. I'm sure the email runs somewhere along the lines of: I can't believe you've made it this far. Me and your grandfather are so proud of you. He showed it to all his coworkers at the art institute. How's the second one going? Love always. I look onto the next email title I'm so proud. My mother. I retreat to one of my other open windows: a movie.

It's over and I'm typing. Working on my second installation. Copying my written words from the tattered Composition Book to the hypnotizing computer. It's 2am. I decide to check my voice mails left from yesterday and the day before and a few days before those two days:

-Requests for public readings and signings

-My publisher crying about how I am punishing her with my self seclusion act.

-An older message from her jubilantly yelling of movie deals already being offered.

I make a mental note to call her after the sun fully rises; thought I know she's up just as I am. I'll apologize for what she calls my 'phase of a hermit lifestyle' as I review the movie deals as she runs them by me...Saying no to the first, claiming that the main character absolutely cannot be played by a white teeny bopper. I'll give her hope in saying that I'll consider the second and third offers. Secretly I feel the second one is peppy and then depressing at all the wrong times, but that's her favorite so I have to humor her. She hates the third choice. I know this but I simply love it. (I had hoped the director of my dreams would beg for the script. After months of waiting and a few pints of Haagen Daz coffee ice cream I got over that rejection. Many people had thought I was recently dumped.) However, this third choice seems so close to my dream that I'll end up settling for it.

My publisher will cry (she always does), claiming that I had made such a dent in history with the numbers I had made on the book that it would be a waste if the movie sales didn't add up to them. After a meeting with director, we come to an agreement of me having the end say on all accounts of the end product of my film. In the end, I'm still not satisfied, though my publisher loves it. In a few years I'll rewrite it and republish it (with my same publisher). I'll demand all old copies to be removed from the shelves and destroyed. Only copies that had already been bought will remain in existence.

-Alana G. G-B