Richard and Judy (in which i react to good news )

It’s just been announced that Jubilee is a Richard and Judy Book Club choice for Summer 2012. This is incredible / amazing / gobsmacking / brilliant / wonderful – delete as applicable. (No! Don’t delete anything! They’re all applicable!)

These are the things I did when Orion’s Fiction head, Susan Lamb, rang to give me the news:

1: I didn’t believe what I was hearing. Each time she told me, my brain scrambled the information. She had to be very, very patient, viz:

SL: The Richard and Judy Book Club has been considering Jubilee, and we’ve just heard that it made the final list.

Me: That’s utterly fab! When do I hear if it’s made the final list?

SL: It has made the final list

Me: Brilliant! But when do we hear about the Book Club choices?

SL Jubilee is a Book Club choice.

Me: I’m stoked! So, what are its chances of…you know…actually being picked?

2: I put down the phone and danced to the following songs:

Florence and the Machine: Dog Days are Over*

Take That: Shine

The dance was a bold fusion of twenties flapper, nineties rave victim and seventies Top of the Pops groundling. I jumped around my writing room. I grandstanded on my reading chair. I stopped briefly because I thought the kitten might be getting frightened.

3: I called my editor and agent to make sure I hadn’t imagined it, and found we had all imagined the same thing.

4: And then I went to pick up my kids from school. As usual.

*Actually, that video is reminiscent of the infamous Total Eclipse of the Heart, isn’t it? Never mind.