Of All That Was Given and All That Was Received
By RÉKA KAPONAY
Hello DOTG Blog readers!
Can you believe it’s been exactly 1 year since I started this blog? 365 days since I sat in my bedroom in New Jersey, tapping away at my laptop keyboard, my heart beating with a desire to start sharing the highs and lows and all the Behind-The-Scenes happenings that come with setting off an intercontinental book tour with all the adventures of becoming a published author at 14.
So my dear friends, Happy Anniversary to us!
I wanted to also express to you my deep gratitude and let you know how much it has meant to me to be able to share my stories here with you. Even though I have posted here a little erratically, sharing these experiences as we have traveled, has been one of the most treasured and therapeutic aspects of all the avenues of my writing.
So thank you!
Thank you all for being here and simply taking the time to listen.
“I can see the smiles of every student, teacher, librarian, book lover, traveler, life-learner, writer and friend we met.“
So much has happened this year. It’s overwhelming even thinking about it. We’ve traveled coast to coast across the United States and Canada, bringing our state and province tally to 38 and 4 respectively. We’ve traversed Mexico, roaming from one end of the Yucatan Peninsula to the other, before escaping to the cool relief of the mountains of Mexico City and the decidedly less humidifying San Miguel de Allende.
We’ve road-tripped across Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Transylvania. Time has passed in a strange mixture of a frozen clock and the blink of an eye.
It’s even more mind-blowing to know that we’ve had well over 100 Dawn of the Guardian Book Events worldwide this year!
It almost seems surreal.
But if I close my eyes now, I can see every single one. Every school, library, bookstore, homeschooling group, conference and community of learning we visited or had the honour of being invited to. I can see the smiles of every student, teacher, librarian, book lover, traveler, life-learner, writer and friend we met. Our shared conversations and laughter. The questions we had for each other and the stories we told one another. It is without the faintest trace of insincerity that I say, I will never forget the experiences we had and how all your stories have indelibly touched my heart.
It’s been a full year of touring, one that started in January with the East Coast Leg of Dawn of the Guardian’s 2017 North American Book Tour and ended in December, after 4 months of nonstop events all across Hungary, with the newly released Hungarian version of Dawn of the Guardian: Az Őrző Hajnala.
Every single time I walk into a bookstore in Hungary and see my book up on the shelves, rubbing shoulders with some of my most favourite authors, I have to stop myself from reverting to that giddy 8-year-old girl who would run into her local library to see if the books she’d put on hold were finally delivered. It’s incredible and extremely humbling and it is with an endless amount of gratitude that I can say, this year has been one of the most rewarding ones along our travels so far.
Standing outside the home our generous hosts, Emi Néni and Pista Bácsi in New Jersey on New Year’s Eve, watching the fireworks go off above New York City, the sparks glittering like the snowflakes falling down upon my hair, I could never have imagined what lay ahead. I had an inkling. An idea at best. A dream.
