We spent the first week doing an edit of my book. I continued to write each day for about thirty minutes to an hour as Brad had suggested. The biggest thing, he said, to writing a novel is to do so like eating an elephant. The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, and he paired or made this analogy to my writing.

I was nearly eighty-five percent finished at the end of week one at Casa Amor. Brad talked to me about the next steps to getting a novel published. He said, "You have to build a platform, Stephanie." By that he meant that I need not only to build a list of followers and to understand the market for my book, I had to get my name out there even before publishing. He also said that since I was nearly finished that I needed to start writing query letters. These are basically applications to publishing houses that may take the time to pick up my book.

While the steps were many, he was able to make it understandable with an almost effortless advisory bent. He knew what to say and what to do at each stage of the process, as he had gone "thru the hoops" on many an occasion. He was, after all, one of the most accomplished writers on the planet currently.

In the following three weeks, I would finish the book. I was able to hammer out the last sentence on a Sunday morning. I didn't know how, but somehow I knew the book would sell. I would someday find out just how successful it would be...