Thanks!

Thank you for the many hours of pure enjoyment!

Hugs, JJ

Kimber, you asked how this changed me as an agent, great question–and then how interesting that one of my clients, Kate Pearce, posted right after you!

I was always an agent who took chances on “unusual” books. When I first shopped Karen Marie Moning (who I discovered and repped for a decade), paranormal was dead. That’s what I was told and repeatedly. THis was 1997. One editor said to me, “You’ll never sell that. Nobody wants to read time travel.” (Sound familiar? Sort of like the “super editor” talking to me about BUTTERFLY??) I went on to sell Karen and Karen went on to be a blockbuster NYT bestseller–paving the way for me to sell another author, Gena Showalter, and to grow another author, Robin Owens, etc and so on. The point? I’m just not a believer in letting market guide my ship, not as an agent OR as an author. If I love it, I champion it–period.

I can give another example in nonfiction. I shopped a book called 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN back a few years ago. I was told repeatedly that nobody wanted memoirs. One publisher bought it, and now five million copies later, I think we can see that the public does, indeed, want memoirs!! LOL!

Anyway, so I’m rambling. But my point is that I was always a risk-taker as an agent, but your question is so wonderful, b/c this journey HAS changed me as an agent. I think it’s made me far more empathetic to my authors, to how bad rejection can sting (I was always empathetic b/c my hubby is a multipublished author, but this experience made me more so.) I think being an author, period, has given me a greater understanding of all the phases that my authors go through. For instance, I really *get* how a copy editor can be frustrating if he/she isn’t the right one for the book. Just one little example. :)

Thanks a million, guys. Thank you for taking a chance on my “little book that could.” Hugs, Deidre

we submitted it under a pseudonym so that nobody would know it was by me. I wanted to see what my peers really thought, not what they might want me to hear.

That was a brave thing to do. I can’t wait to read Butterfly Tattoo.

Thanks for sharing your inspiring story.

There’s hope for me yet.

I don’t seem to want to write

1) “tough” women with guns stories
2) CIA/FBI agent stories
3) demon or shape shifter love stories
4) Dan Brown type thrillers
5) very literary Ishiguro type stuff

What I DO want to write is a little more off the beaten path. Odd imperfect characters dealing with an equally imperfect world.

Glad to know others got lonely on the journey to being pubb’d too. But that there remains hope.

Thanks!

But, I’m with Louisa, from the first page of this book, you know you’re reading something special.

And aren’t books supposed to take us places we wouldn’t get to go otherwise?

I was also struck by how gracefully you juggled his/her point of view in Butterfly Tattoo — both rang so very true.