The Gratuitous Rejection Club. Snort. Finally I’m member of a club! We should all get together for drinks. And wow, getting rejected from something you didn’t even know you had applied/queried for. That’s just terrible!

The whole discovering myself as a writer is an on going process, but I can be such an analytical thinker that I analyze things to death. Ironically, it was my need to analyze that led me to the awareness about how I write. That and sheer stubbornness. I need a way to stop that from happening. Deadline panic is great for that. Not fun, but great. Pantsing (hmm, I think this sentence is headed someplace dangerous) is a completely valid way to write. So is plotting. I don’t think it’s possible to tell from Julia Quinn’s wonderful books that she falls more on the plotting end of the scale anymore than you can read, say, Scandal, and tell I’m a pantser. At least I don’t think so.

SonomaLass: I see your handle around and I always wonder if you live near me. I live in Petaluma and work in Sonoma. I hope you get your copy back, and thank you, very much for sharing that story. Tell your daughter I hope she enjoys it.

Gennita Low! squeee!!! Thank you.

I’m another unrepentant pantser here ;-). And I love your books, which are on my Keeper Shelf. Can’t wait to read your new one!

As an academic, I am trained to write beautiful boring crap. This is why I read fiction but am never tempted to try my hand at writing it! Hmm, maybe that’s why you and Sherry Thomas are two of my favorite writers. You have overcome what I cannot.

I was looking forward to reading Scandal this weekend; it has been sitting tantalizingly atop my pile since I bought it a week ago, waiting for me to finish the epic fantasy that was on seven-day loan from the library. But last night (as I was in the last chapter of said epic), my almost-18 daughter came home from a date, plopped herself down on my bed, and idly picked up the top book on my pile. Yours. She paged through it a bit, stopped, read a bit, looked up and said, “Wait, this heroine isn’t perfect, young and beautiful?” I said that was one reason I was eager to read it, but I don’t think she was listening. She had flipped to the beginning of the book — last time I saw it, it was going out the door in her greedy little hands. So I’m going to have to wait a couple more days to read it, but I think you have a new fan.

Thanks for sharing your first sale stories. I always find them inspiring to read, and this one was no exception.

I discovered I am a seat of the pants writer and that anything much beyond bare bones planning is fatal to my process-’I have the doorstops to prove it.

However frustrating that must be, it is great to have that kind of self-knowledge.

And welcome to the Gratuitous Rejections club; when I was first applying for academic jobs, I was rejected by *two* different committees at a University That Will Not Be Named. I had sent my file to one committee, which turned me down and apparently sent the file to another search. Their staff were so efficient that I got “no thank you” letters from both searches.

Sherry Thomas, oh my gosh, the polished crap just never goes away does it? Dang, but this writing stuff is hard!

MayaM: When I heard J.R. Ward considers herself more of a plotter now than a pantser, I gasped. I think everyone’s writing evolves, and from what I’ve seen, every writer in the world is looking to be more efficient. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll be a plotter, too. I just haven’t figured out how to do it without killing the spark. Chill, though, because there are lots of pansters out here. The only thing you need to worry about (mostly) is what’s working for you now. Well, and what’s not working, because that’s something that probably needs to change.

Kaley: Regarding the duke, I think he understood Sophie had issues with Banallt and so did her brother, and he was looking for a way to make peace between them so the political work would go smoothly. And since he had reason to admire Banallt, and in fact did, he wanted Sophie to understand this, too. There are many ways to read and interpret the duke’s behavior, and I think yours is quite valid.

I wondered as I read if the Duke was trying to help out his friend Banallt, sort of pleading Banallt’s case to Sophie or providing opportunities for them to be together. Was I reading too deep, or was that part of his motivation?

Thanks for this story, and how you told it.

“I hated that query from Carolyn Jewel so much, I think I need to reject her again, just to make sure!”

LOL! Love your story. I’ve heard great things about Scandal. Looking forward to reading it.

Welcome to the club.

Unabashed fan of yours,

Jane, I just love starting my Friday mornings with your First sale stories.