I was riding my cargo bike, which has a wooden box in the front.  I’d just filled it with kids, and one little tyke (who can hardly talk) suddenly came up with a full sentence:  “We’re going slower than a snail!”

Another one piped in with, “Those people walking are faster than us!”

And indeed, at that moment, a little girl in pigtails zoomed past us on her pink bike, closely followed by a granny who had her walker tied to the back rack of her bike.

“Road hogs!”  I wanted to call, but the truth is, I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately.

Jean Kwok and her cargo bike

It is really strange, and very special, to be a debut author.  Especially one whose book hasn’t even come out yet.  It started when I first went to Riverhead headquarters and walked past rows of books by Junot Diaz, Anne Lamott, and Chang-rae Lee.  Then, in my editor Sarah McGrath’s office, I spotted the manuscript of Khaled Hosseini’s A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS in a box next to mine.  I had to pinch myself hard then.

When you love books, people in books and publishing are kind of like rock stars to you, and it’s just stunning to be in a position to actually meet the people you’ve always admired.  You probably knew this already but I hadn’t realized that real people wrote and published the books I cared about so much.

In the past seven days, I’ve heard that my novel is a “Discover Great New Writers” pick for Barnes and Noble, the Russian rights have been sold, and seen myself in an author video, looking like a real writer.  I can’t tell you how many times I wandered through bookstores, wondering what it would be like to actually have my own book in there.  And now, I’ll be featured in lots of stores, including some really fantastic independent bookstores.

So my husband claims I’m a danger to traffic on my bike but I would like to state that although we may not be traveling at light speed, there is a whirlwind going on in my mind.

An old friend came to see me a while ago.  I’d given her precise directions on when she should get off the train.  However, to my surprise, she phoned me from a completely different train station.

“I’m sorry, I missed the stop,” she said.

“Oh, that can happen,” I said.  “It’s easy to- -”

“I was paying attention.”  She paused and I could hear the phone line crackle.  “I didn’t get off the train because I just really didn’t think that you could possibly live there.  I mean, I looked out the window and there were a couple of cows.  And some grass.”

Although I don’t live quite as far in the country as this might sound, I’m certainly not in New York anymore.  Or Hong Kong.  There are, in fact, cows and sheep grazing freely in a pasture just a few blocks from my house.

My twenty-two-year-old nephew, born and bred in New York, came recently to visit me and almost ran for cover when he saw them.    “Are those wild cows?” he asked.

But I actually live in a lovely town, with smart sophisticated people and a great school.  And on a snowy day, this is what I see from my window:

This swan couple always swims in the canal outside our house.  And inside, I have this:

That’s Anibaba, the little cat we found on the beach on Bali.  She’s really happy she doesn’t need to go outside today, especially since she doesn’t have any under-fur.

Do I miss New York sometimes?  Yes.  Absolutely.  But when I have views like this from my window, I can deal with any wild cows.

If my hair isn’t cut perfectly, I get firmly rebuked (and rightly so) by photographers, makeup artists, and other people who need to make me appear presentable. I’ve learned that since my hair is all one length, every minuscule fault in the hair shows up on the photo or video.

I had to search through all of Holland for the right hairdresser and finally found her in the form of the lovely Elena at Toni & Guy in the Hague.  A few snips of her magical scissors and my hair is just right.

However, we always have this conversation at the beginning of our haircuts:

Elena inspects my hair before I get whisked away to be washed and conditioned.  As she looks more closely, she raises one perfect eyebrow.  Her British accent makes her sound even more incredulous.  “Have you been cutting off bits of your hair again?”

This is the part where I look down and begin to stammer.

Because Elena is as kind as she is beautiful, she smiles and says, “No, it’s all right.  You can cut your own hair if you want.”

But then she stops smiling and starts enunciating very clearly, to make sure I understand.  “But please try not to do anything that…  Would.  Be.  Impossible.  To.  Fix.  All right?”

As I nod earnestly, I hear her say under her breath, “Close shave this time.”

Sometimes I wake up in the morning when I haven’t been to Elena in a while, and my hair is so long that I can’t see, and then before I’m fully awake, I’ve taken a pair of scissors and hacked off a few chunks.  So this was one of my New Year’s resolutions, to not upset Elena anymore.

But guess what happened this morning?  Yep.