What My Mom Says...

I'm thirty-two.  I've been out of the house for... wait let me do the math... on my calculator... 14 years.  I'm married.  I have one child and one more on the way.
And yet, I will always care what my mom says.  It's one of those things you don't get over.
So let me back up the train.  My first memories of my mom highlight her with a book.  She is the lady who taught me the meaning of the word bibliophile.  Which is cool, because I think that is what got me going on the whole reading journey -her love of books.  I think I just wanted to know... what was so great about reading?
Then I tried it out, and I was hooked for life.
I introduced my mom to YA fantasy.  She was always curious about what her kids were reading (she still is, with two teenagers in the house).  I'd read Robin McKinley or whoever and pass it along to her when I was done.  She's read everyone on my top YA fantasy list and even passed stuff on to me, occasionally.  She loved Hunger Games as much as I did.
So I knew I had to pass along my newest draft of Compis to my mom.
I know people who get nervous about their first reviews or when they get a blog mention.  I get nervous when my mom reads something I've written, because I know she has great taste and she'll be honest.  OMG, I wish you could have seen my face when I had her read my first story with a SEX SCENE.  hahahaha
Yet I've never been as nervous as I was this time, because I LOVE this story and these characters like they are a part of me.  You know how authors talk about the book they had to write?  This is my book.  I dream about this book.  I obsess over it.  YA fantasy is my thing, my passion.  I've wanted to write a YA fantasy book for, well, forever.
I never thought I could be a writer at all, never finished a book until Six Keys, so I focused on other things.  Then I had this dream (Okay, this will sound funny, but I get pretty much all my story ideas from dreams) about being in a tribe and turning into a person who could fly.  Man did that stick in my head BIG TIME.  I was in the middle of doing a major revision on Six Keys, so I absolutely refused to let myself write it.
But I couldn't get rid of it.  I became obsessed with the plot in a big way, so I bought myself a notebook and starting jotting down my ideas about the world of my dreams.  I thought out the characters and the land and the laws and the way the world worked.  And when I finally finished Six Keys, AND fulfilled my work obligations, I went for it.  Working part time and as a mom, I wrote 15,000 in a week.  Unheard of for me.  I got about half the book, 30,000 written by the end of the month and then, in another month I finished it.
It was a breeze!  The easiest writing I've ever done.  I still can't believe how quickly it went. Okay, enough gushing.
She loved it.  I'm just so relieved.  Whew!  :)