old friends get in touch with the great pretender

What a wild couple of days! I heard from Sarah, which is not entirely unusual, but then the next day I got an e-mail from STACEY of all people! I have not heard from Stacey in probably six or seven years. I hate falling out of touch with people with whom I have so much in common. Stacey is a cat-loving sci-fi nerd. Sound familiar? 🙂 AND she has a new baby! Oh my gosh, more of my friends are procreating!! Nicole had her baby last week, two months early (both she and the baby are doing OK). Oh, and then, Kim e-mailed me out of the blue wanting to get together for dinner last Friday. Luckily, I was available. Her job eats up so much of her time — we have been trying to get together since before Xmas last year. All these old friends popping out of the woodwork — I love it!!

Stacey was kind enough to send along the above photo, proving that little nerds do indeed grow up to be big nerds. We were at some geeky smart kid competition in sixth grade. It’s weird to see myself at the same height as the rest of my friends, albeit with quite the chubby little face and tummy. I’m not sure what I’m wearing or why in the world my hair was like that. Ah, I think that at age 11 I just didn’t care.

Yesterday Doc and I went by the Barnes & Noble/SMU Bookstore, and they have plastered the entire front window with our books. They’ve put almost 50 copies on the window displays, and TWO photographs of us. Plus, another display inside the store with another photograph. And I thought it was weird to see my name on something on the bookshelves — it’s nothing compared to seeing myself poster-sized in the front window. Hey, at least it’s a good picture (thanks to a brilliant photographer and the magic of Photoshop).

I’m beginning to freak out about all this now, especially the signing this coming weekend where I have to get up in front of a crowd of strangers and talk. Amazon.com has, on our book’s page, a section with the header “People who bought titles by Katy Scott also bought…” I think that was the most shocking thing I’ve seen so far, in the sense that it had some impact on the reality/disjointed-reality of my whole perception of this book thing. SLAM! Part of it hit home tonight. I have achieved a really big goal in my life, and now I don’t know what to do. Part of me feels guilty about it, for reasons I can’t quite explain yet. Part of me feels like it’s really cool, and that I should be proud. Part of me wants to crawl back under the rock.

I guess mostly it feels like a really big change in my life, and I don’t want to become something or someone that I am not. But maybe that’s stupid… maybe I already AM what I have been mistakenly perceiving myself not to be. I don’t know. A little voice keeps telling me, “How can you call yourself an author when you know damn well that a big part of this was pure unadulterated luck? You are pretending, and people are going to find out.”

Tell me: how can I sound happy and excited AND paranoid and freaked out in the same weblog entry? Oh hell, I go to those extremes within the same hour, sometimes.