Oh. My. God.

So I get an email from the lovely Cathy yesterday, telling me about the latest issue of my favorite quilting magazine, Quilter's Home. In addition to another AWESOME cover, the issue also contains an article about writing for quilting magazines, and at the end Mark gives his email address and encourages readers to submit ideas for articles. Cathy thought that perhaps I should give it a shot, and I figured it couldn't hurt. After trying to come up with pitches for Bitchy Stitcher-style articles that I thought might appeal to him, I finally decided to just go ahead and submit my mock tutorial for binding quilts. I sent it off around noon yesterday, and at 9:51 p.m. last night I received this reply:

Oh this is very cute. Let me read it more closely. I think we may have a winner! xooxm

Mark Lipinski
Editor in Chief
Mark Lipinski's Quilter's Home

If I manage to get published in THE GREATEST QUILTING MAGAZINE EVER only 9 months after I started quilting and writing about it, I will probably just fall right down and die from pure joy. It would also be the first thing I had ever published outside of work. (It doesn't really count when they publish you because you already work for them and they don't have to pay you extra for it.)

Of course, he clearly hasn't made a final decision yet, so there is still the very real possibility that the next email will say, "On second thought, this sucks ass." So I still have lots of hoping and praying and finger-crossing to do. And even if it doesn't work out (this time), I am still grateful to Cathy for kicking my butt into gear to submit something, and to all of you who read and comment here for giving me the confidence to keep writing.