So Exciting--I feel like I ate too much candy

Got some grrrrreat news yesterday (yes, that's my Tony the Tiger impersonation. I have to include it because not only did I get grrrrreat news, I also ate three bowls of Frosted Flakes.) The book I've been slaving over for 2 years, *Big in Japan,* has been selected by a publisher, Jolly Fish Press, for their fall 2012 list!

Yeeehawww!

I started shopping it around in September, and found Jolly Fish shortly thereafter. The minute I read about them, I had a gut feeling this was going to be a great fit. They were my first choice.

Doing a jolly jig over here.

So, about the book. All these months I've been writing it, I've been asking myself this question: is the world really ready for a novel with a love story plot for a sumo wrestler?

I guess we'll see!

Big in Japan is the story of an overweight nobody guy from Texas who goes to Japan and accidentally becomes the first blond sumo wrestler. He has to defeat his biggest enemy and win the Emperor's Cup to get the girl.

I had a ton of fun researching and writing it. I loved finding out all about sumo--a sport we Americans have a tough time imagining as being as amazing as it is. I watched a LOT of youtube videos of sumo matches. The power, people! They are just enormous and strong! It was fun to get to troll through my fun memories of living in Japan and to get to use some of my Japanese language again (although I excised most of it as drafts progressed.) I spent a lot of time outlining it and using the tips I learned as I studied writing guides like Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, and How to Write a Damn Good Novel, by James Frey. I holed up in my writing lair and did major rewrites while my kids watched waaay too much TV and decimated the blue carpet. Now, I'm so excited! So thrilled! It's so sweet, it almost feels like I just ate too much candy.

(If there is such a thing. I'm not sure.)

Blueberry Cake and Failure (which precedes success)

My now-4yo daughter had a birthday this weekend and requested a blueberry cake. Part of me went "ew." There's family folklore around here about the Christmas morning that I labored to create homemade blueberry muffins using a dubious recipe and came up with mounds of bready, fruit-studded, gag-inducing sand that not only the kids hated but that our chickens would not eat.

So, the request of the blueberry cake caught me off guard.

Have you ever noticed that modern blueberries just aren't quite as good as the candy blueberries that come in little powdery purple clumps in Jiffy Muffin Mixes? I love those candy blueberries. My husband, whose mind gravitates toward all things agricultural and genetically altered, complains that modern blueberries have been so bred for size that the sweetness has gone out of them and their texture is (his words) "nasty."

I still like them fine in a McDonald's Fruit & Yogurt Parfait, as I've mentioned before.

Anyhow, it became a challenge, and at the advice of my baking-queen sister-in-law Julie, I bought two(more expensive because it contains a can of REAL wild blueberries) Betty Crocker blueberry muffin mixes and baked them in 9" rounds and then drizzled them with a lemon glaze made out of 1/2 cup lemon juice and 2/3 cup sugar and some water, cooked on the stove until the sugar dissolved. I used a chopstick to poke dozens of holes in the cake for the lemony sweetness to seep down through both layers.

Can I just say? I think I redeemed myself on the blueberry front.

This isn't my cake but it's the internet image that matches it best. I did two layers...Mmm. I love this cake plate.

Right now I'm getting details together to run a new round of queries on my novel. The topic is out there, I'm aware. It's not something most of us will have read a dozen times in the past. I'm hoping some brilliant agent will see it for the cash cow it is and snap it up.

And like the gaggy blueberry muffins that preceded the triumphant blueberry cake, here's believing the non-triumphant queries I've launched will be followed by a bidding war among publishers for some lucky agent out there!