Today is a very proud day: My latest book, The Green Season, is at last available. The book is a collection of essays about Costa Rica, where I happily lived and worked for nearly two years. The publisher is The Tico Times Publications Group, a brand-new wing of Central America’s most distinguished English-language newspaper. One version of the book is available in Costa Rica, and the other edition is available in the U.S., and they are both being released today.

It’s a dream come true. And I am very, very excited.

You could say that The Green Season has been a year in the making, since I first proposed the book to The Tico Times’ owner in the autumn of 2014. Jonathan Harris has always been a voracious reader, and he’d long hoped to found a publishing house. The Green Season provided a perfect, ready-made excuse to make that vision a reality.

You could also say that the book has been two years in the making, because it contains essays written over the course of 12 months in Costa Rica. Most essays first appeared in The Tico Times, others in The Smart Set and Hippocampus. My original manuscript was about 400 pages long, because it included every scrap of writing I liked. In the interests of taste and readability, I pared it back, and by the time I submitted the revised manuscript to Jonathan, it was a lean 200 pages.

But really, this book was 15 years in the making, because I first learned about Costa Rica in 2000, and I spent most of my adulthood yearning to live there and write about its people. When the Fulbright program turned me down the third time, I interviewed with David Boddiger of The Tico Times, and he gave me a shot. Landing a job there changed my life forever. I wrote about 480 articles in 24 months and produced about 40 short videos as well. I’ve received a lot of amazing opportunities over the years, but no work has ever been quite as rewarding as contributing to this scrappy, 60-year-old newspaper.

So please help me celebrate this labor of love. I think everyone will find something to enjoy about The Green Season, whether it’s my account of an ill-fated surfing lesson or a profile on Costa Rica’s most famous war hero. Pura vida—it’s been a long time coming.