***

My journey to publication has been an enlightening experience, to say the least. Exactly one year ago, I was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on an annual family vacation. While everyone was sunning themselves around the pool, I snuck off to check emails at a local internet café. Lo and behold, I spotted a familiar name in my mailbox: Champagne Books. At this point, I had already received letters from approximately eighteen publishers – kind and complimentary mind you, but still rejections. So you can imagine my state of mind as I sat there on a metal chair determining if I really wanted to open that message and ruin a perfectly good vacation.

I took a deep breath, glanced around at other customers typing away, and then returned by attention to J. Ellen Smith’s letter. I am pleased to offer you a contract… I almost fell off of my seat. Was it really possible that someone saw the potential in my story? Ten minutes later, I was back at the pool with a strawberry Margarita in one hand, a printed out message in the other, and a huge grin on my face.

However, arriving at this point in my journey was an adventure in itself. Sixteen years ago, my world was turned upside down. I lost my beloved father to colon cancer after an intense two and a half year battle. I was angry at him, at God, at the world in general. I needed an outlet and found it by sitting down in front of my computer, releasing emotions that were racing through my head and heart. This therapeutic exercise gradually evolved into a related fictional story about a woman’s personal journey to find faith and forgiveness. In the process of writing Flaherty’s Crossing and exploring my main character’s growth, I found myself learning and growing as well.

I entered this “genre-blending” story in numerous contests, knowing that agents and editors would be involved in final round judging. I was amazed that I won time and time again, but there was never a request for a full manuscript. I set to work creating a great query letter. I requested reviews from my rough-draft manuscript, and participated in pitch sessions at various conferences. Although I eventually received numerous requests for full copies, I learned a very difficult lesson from trying to market a book that is “out of the box”…so to speak. Although Flaherty’s Crossing was truly a labor of love and the agents who read it consistently loved my voice and writing style, they weren’t sure how to market it or where it would sit on the shelf.

Now this didn’t prevent my manuscript from grabbing the interest of one visionary agent in New York. She complimented me for being original, and absolutely fell in love with this story. However, after being under contract for only six months and having received rejections by eight of the largest publishing houses, she felt that changing the story line completely and emphasizing romance would ultimately be the best solution. Long story short, we parted ways and since I no longer had agent representation, I sought out smaller houses on my own.

In closing, all I can say is…persistence pays off. On February 1^st, Champagne Books officially released Flaherty’s Crossing and I’m proud to announce that I’ve chosen to donate all my proceeds to the colon cancer research project at Providence Medical Center in my father’s name. In the meantime, I’m busy writing again and have discovered my passion for creating action-adventure stories. It’s my hope that once Severed Threads is completed, it will touch lives and inspire readers as deeply as Flaherty’s Crossing.

You can visit Kaylin online at www.kaylinmcfarren.com or visit her book’s website at www.flahertyscrossing.com.

***

Usually, this feature details an author’s first sale, but I’m going to deviate from the norm and talk instead about my third sale—a road as perilous and fraught with reversals of fortune as any first sale.

Like a lot of aspiring authors, I really thought that once I made that all-important first sale, fame and glory would be mine. Okay, maybe not fame and glory, but I did think that the first sale was the toughest, and all sales that followed would be much easier, with multi-book contracts and supportive publishers and a steadily growing fan base. I just needed a foot in the door, and the rest would fall into place.

Following the sale (many years coming) of Lady X’s Cowboy, my sale of Love In a Bottle came soon after, thus convincing me that, yes, I was well on my way as a professional writer. I had wanted to be a writer since about the same time I learned how to read, and later even relocated to a very cold part of the country, leaving behind a promising relationship, to get an MFA in Fiction. I got the degree, continued to be in the relationship, came back to California and got to work. Cut to several years later and I did finally make that crucial first and second sale.

Then, a funny thing happened. Reality. In my hubris, I switched agents, thinking I wanted a real power player in my corner. Yet, even with this hot new agent, I couldn’t make another sale. My publisher kept turning down proposals, even for completed manuscripts. Eventually I received the horrible news that my publisher no longer felt that they could “grow” me as an author. (I still don’t really know what that means.) I sobbed my guts out, thinking that I was done as a romance author.

Then, as my husband dried my tears, I started to think. I’d tried playing by the rules, writing romances that I thought would sell. But what if I wrote the kind of romance I had always wanted to read. Something that wasn’t set in a Regency ballroom or had anything to do with English aristocrats of any kind. Something with a ton of adventure, exotic locations, magic and heroes and heroines of common birth but extraordinary courage.

The Blades of the Rose were born.

I got to work. And kept working, writing, even as I continued to suffer more setbacks. The hot agent cut me after trying to sell a few more proposals. So I had no agent and no publisher. The two books I did have published met with great reviews but so-so sales. All I had was an extremely supportive spouse and a manuscript that needed completion.

I finished the book. I found an incredible agent who believed in me and believed in my paranormal historical adventure romance. She submitted the book to editors. All of them said the same thing: love the writing, but this book is set in Mongolia. No one buys historical romances set in Mongolia. Clearly, I was crazy to have even attempted doing just that.

It looked like my dream series would never make it onto bookstore and library shelves.

Then, one amazing day, my agent called me. An editor over at Kensington loved the book, loved how different it was, and wanted to make an offer. Oh, and the editor wanted to know if I saw the book as part of a series. I sure did! My agent told me to sit my butt down and write up a series proposal immediately. I pounded it out, then my agent sent it off, and we both gnawed at our fingertips in anticipation. She called me again, soon after.

“Sit down,” she commanded me.

I sat.

“They want to buy the whole four book series.”

I didn’t cry, but I felt dizzy, excited, terrified. And happy. Very, very happy. A celebratory meal of sushi followed. Also some celebratory shopping.

So that’s how it happened. Those first two sales were wonderful, and a long time coming, but I think that my third (and fourth, fifth and sixth) sales were what truly told me I was now a professional writer. I’d been ambitious, then humbled, then determined. And now I’m awaiting the September launch of the series I have always wanted to write, knowing that, when it comes to dreams, it helps to be a little crazy.

***
“Are you firing me? I asked my agent.

It was late one Friday afternoon in April 2005, and as I sat in my office at the large Philadelphia law firm where I worked a mid-level associate, I was surprised to see my agent Scott’s phone number pop up on my caller identification.  To that point, Scott and I had communicated almost exclusively by e-mail, so I figured that the news could not be good.

The road to publication had to that point had been littered with potholes.  I’d decided almost four years earlier, in the wake of September 11^th to get serious about my rock star dream of becoming a novelist.  I’d taken an evening course at a local university called “Write Your Novel This Year” (the course is now called “Write Your Novel This Month” – seriously– and I don’t think I could have taken that course; I would have been too intimidated.)  I’d finished my first manuscript, THE KOMMANDANT’S GIRL,  in a year, writing from 5-7 in the morning as I worked fulltime as an attorney, gotten it into shape and queried about a hundred agents.  I signed with one purportedly reputable agent who proceeded to send out the manuscript to about twenty publishers without speaking to them about it first and then bill me a fortune for postage and copying.  Meanwhile, Scott Hoffman, a then relatively new agent who had kindly been giving me lots of free advice, agreed to take on my manuscript if I would make extensive changes.  So I left the first agent and spent months reediting the manuscript.  After several rounds of revisions, we were finally ready to hit the market.

But even with Scott’s magical editing touch and formidable sales ability, the manuscript sat untaken.  By the summer of 2004, we were rejected by 39 publishers (including those sent out by agent number one) and there seemed to be nowhere else for the book to go.  So Scott said, “Write another book, we’ll sell that one first and then sell THE KOMMANDANT’S GIRL with it.”  There is nothing, I think, more disheartening to an unpublished author than being told to start all over again, knowing how much work goes into a novel.  But I had no other choice; I wasn’t going to give up on the dream.  So I began diligently working on the manuscript that would ultimately become ALMOST HOME.

Eleven months later, April 8, 2005 to be exact, Scott called.  My question as to whether he was firing me seemed a fair one, given that my first novel had been dead on the shelf for almost a year.  After all, agents get paid on commission and why should he stick with me when my book wasn’t selling?  “

But he reassured me that he was not.  “Are you calling to yell at me for not finishing the second book?” I asked then.

“No,” he said.  “I’m calling to tell you that I sold the first one.”  I was shocked – I didn’t even know that we were still out on submission.  And it turned out that one publisher had been holding onto the manuscript for almost a year and finally decided to make an offer.   Given the lack of competing interest or offers, the deal was very small and THE KOMMANDANT’S GIRL seemed destined for obscurity.  But within two years, the book had been selected by Barnes and Noble for their online book club, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a Quill nomination for best romance.

So when an aspiring author expresses frustration at rejection and feels as though he or she has exhausted all options, I tell the story of my four years and 39 rejections on the road to publication.  It wasn’t easy to take, but it was all part of the process to get where I am today, and I consider myself proof that it is possible for anyone.  You just need to keep going and have a few key people believe in you.

***

I was sitting at my desk on the sales floor when the phone rang.  It was my agent.  She told me I sold my book–

BORING.  It’s what happened but what a snooze.

The real story, the important one with life lessons and pot banging, is not about the sale, but of an agent calling and offering to rep my book.

I had been taking the two prong approach to selling my manuscript.  If I couldn’t get an editor, I tried to get an agent and vice versa.  Back then, if an editor or agent came within a hundred miles of me, I threw on makeup and a skirt and drove to meet her.

It wasn’t easy.  I worked full time.  My husband traveled.  We had three kids. I volunteered  And I was writing from 4 – 7 a.m. in the morning.

The agent on the phone wasn’t one I’d met in person.  I’d heard her discussed at a writers’ conference, liked what I heard, and I figured she’d be a good agent for a first time writer.  I was right.

She called me on a Monday.  She said she liked my writing and thought she could sell this manuscript.  I thanked her, I think coherently, hung up the phone, and said in disbelief to my husband, “I have an agent . . . I’m going to sell my book.”

Kevin was as stunned as I was.  He’d given lip-service to the “Cathy is writing a book” endeavor, but he hadn’t believed.  Other people write books–not someone you sleep with.

Look, I don’t blame him for his doubts.  I was the one who had the vision.  It wasn’t that people expected me to fail . . . they just couldn’t wrap their brains around the notion of my succeeding.

But Kevin believed that day –because after we celebrated around the kitchen, after we pulled out pots and pans and banged them and shimmied and shaked with a gusto to make a Lebanese street festival proud, he said,  “I get it.  It’s little steps.”

“What’s little steps?” I asked, wooden spoon poised mid-bang.

“What you did.  This selling your book.  Getting an agent.  You didn’t do it all at once.  You took little steps.”

I had never looked at it that way, but it was true.  First step, sit down and write; second step, start connecting with other writers; third, attend workshops; fourth, network and so on and so forth.

Little steps.  Persistent ones and always in the direction of my dream.

Kevin had a dream too.  He’d wanted to be a stand-up comedian.  He’d tried an open mike night when he was in his twenties but I don’t think it went well.  As far as I knew he hadn’t tried it again.

But whether he believed I’d sell or not, he’d been watching me pursue my goal.  He’d noticed that, in spite of rejection letters and tough critiques, I’d created room in a life chock full of things I loved to write.

The next week, he signed up for an acting class.  A semester later he took another and then later one on improv.  His next step was to try out for an improv troupe.  He was asked to join.

Did he head for stand-up stardom?

No.

After meeting guys working the circuit, he realized the road life wasn’t for him.  He enjoyed the troupe, auditioned for commercials and the like, and had a couple of gigs at sales conventions–all great fun and very fulfilling.

As for me, a year later my agent sold my book to an editor who came within my one hundred mile radius.  I met the editor at a writers’  conference, introduced myself, and told her the book was on her desk.  She thanked me.  The following week, I received the call.

Now for the kicker–I was lucky the agent took me on that day so long ago that brought about changes to our lives.  I later learned that if my manuscript had arrived on her desk on Friday, she would have sent it back because she’d decided she was repping too many authors.  She didn’t need more.  She’d ordered her secretary to return all unread manuscripts cluttering her office with polite rejections.

However, over the weekend, she’d attended a writers’ conference, gossiped with other agents, and had decided she wasn’t repping enough authors.  She needed more!  Where are the manuscripts?  She had to have manuscripts!  Give her something to read!

And that, my friends, is when my manuscript was placed in her hands.  I came so close to being passed over.

Would I have sold eventually?

You bet . . . because I would have continued those small, persistent steps in the direction of my dream.

***

First sale, huh?  It was a looong time ago.  But one doesn’t forget that sort of thing.  I can still remember the large manila envelope with my own handwriting on it, addressed to me, lying on the dining room table.

I’d sent out about ten of these, a synopsis and three chapters, and all of them had come back just like this–the manuscript stuffed into my SASE, with a brief cover letter or card saying, “We’re sorry to inform you…”  Sometimes there was one line scribbled on the page, a note from the editor saying the idea was too overdone, or some other reason for the rejection.  (In hindsight, I know that these short personal notes were a positive sign, but at the time they didn’t mean much to me beyond “No”.)

This proposal was the last one to be returned.  It was from Avon.  I opened it a crack, pulled out the letter and saw those words in the first paragraph:  “I’m sorry…”

I was so depressed that I just shoved it all back in the envelope and didn’t even bother to read the whole letter.  It sat there on the table for several weeks.  Eventually I had to clear the table (does this suggest anything about my housekeeping?) and pulled out the manuscript in preparation to toss it.

I realized then that it was rather a long letter, for a rejection.  A whole page long.  I don’t remember the name of the editor who wrote it, I’m sorry to say.  But it gave some commentary on the proposal, suggested some changes and asked me to revise and resubmit.

Whoa.  And I’d let it sit there for weeks!  The delay may have worked for me, though, because meanwhile a change had taken place at Avon.  The editor who’d written me had left, and Ellen Edwards had come on board.

As is common with editors newly arrived at a publisher, Ellen was looking for some unknown writers to develop for her own stable.  Lucky for me, my revision arrived at just the right time to catch her eye.

She called and asked me for the rest of the manuscript.

Oops.

This is where my first sale story becomes a bit unusual.  I had a bad habit of starting books, writing about seven chapters, and then deciding some other story sounded more interesting.  I never wrote a synopsis.  I knew enough to know this was a bad habit.  So I’d decided, as an exercise, to put together a proposal–3 chapters and a synopsis.  Once I’d done that, I figured (naively) why not send it out?

There was no “rest of the manuscript.”  I had already sent them most of what I had.

At this point, Ellen would have been forgiven by every editor in New York for hanging up on me.  But instead of telling me to finish and submit again, which is what I frankly deserved to be told, she asked if I could write a love/sex scene as an example of what I could do.

Oh sure!  Absolutely!  Whatever you want!  Squee!

For the first and only time, I had to go forward in a book and a story I had no idea about, and write a scene.  So I wrote a scene on a tropical island, but it was in a tent, and rain was pouring down.  I sent it back to Ellen, and they offered me a contract, and a deadline, for the book which became THE HIDDEN HEART.

I’m looking at that contact now.  It was signed in early April, so I probably got the offer in March.  The deadline for 120,000 words was June 1.  Two months.

I guess I did it.  I must have!   I can remember writing toward that scene on the island, as if it were a lighthouse in the dark.  I’d never finished a book before.  The subsequent plot has often been observed to be “globe-trotting,” if not a bit wonky, to put it politely.

But I have Ellen Edwards and her faith in me to thank for becoming a writer.  I’m not sure I ever would have finished a book if I hadn’t had that scene and that contract to propel me past Chapter Seven.

Funnily enough, I’ve never been able to do that again: write a scene way ahead in a book and fill in the middle.  I wish I could, as it worked pretty well that time.

LESSONS IN FRENCH BY LAURA KINSALE—IN STORES JANUARY 26, 2010

Laura Kinsale’s unique and powerfully written love stories transcend the romance genre. In this, her first new book in five years, she delivers a poignant, funny, sexy, Regency romance sure to delight her many fans and attract a whole new readership.

Trevelyan and Callie are childhood sweethearts with a taste for adventure, until the fateful day her father discovers them embracing in the carriage house and, in a furious frenzy, drives Trevelyan away in disgrace. Nine long, lonely years later, Trevelyan returns. Callie discovers that he can still make her blood race and fill her life with excitement, but he can’t give her the one thing she wants more than anything—himself.

For Trevelyan, Callie is a spark of light in a world of darkness and deceit. Before he can bear to say his last goodbyes, he’s determined to sweep her into one last, fateful adventure, just for the two of them.

About the Author

Laura Kinsale, a former geologist, is the New York Times bestselling author of Flowers from the Storm, The Prince of Midnight, and Seize the Fire. She and her husband divide their time between Santa Fe and Dallas. For more information, please visit www.laurakinsale.com or follow her on Twitter, @LauraKinsale

***

This is sort of my second “first sale” story here at Dear Author. I know…how did that happen, right?

See, three years ago, my first Sydney Croft book released, so my writing partner for the Croft books, Stephanie Tyler, and I talked about that sale, because it was our first.

Sort of.

It was our first single-title sale, but just weeks before that… (queue tinkly dream-sequence-flashback sound effects)

Hurricane Katrina had really messed up my life. We lost everything, and my son and I were living with my parents in Washington state while my husband stayed on his Coast Guard boat in Mississippi where he was still stationed. I’d gotten back up on the writing horse, and was working on the Croft project with Stephanie, and trying to figure out what I should do on my own.

(more tinkly music)

Several months earlier, I’d entered a short story in the Kensington Brava contest that was judged by Kate Duffy. I did very well in the contest, but didn’t win. Still, Kate called to discuss what she liked and didn’t like, and offered to take a second look if I revised.

So I did. And she didn’t buy it.

But after Katrina, Kate, who was an incredibly generous person, offered a full manuscript critique to the high bidder in an auction that my friends and colleagues put together to benefit me (to this day, I still tear up when I think about how the romance community rallies when things get bad.)

I emailed her to thank her, and to my surprise, she asked for my phone number. Then she called, and we talked (well, I mostly babbled like an idiot) for nearly an hour about writing, the projects I had on my hard drive (I had evacuated with my laptop, thankfully) and she asked me to send her something.

She also told me to submit that novella she’d rejected to another publisher, because she believed it would sell. It wasn’t right for her, but she knew it was right for someone.

So I sent her a proposal, and I’ll never forget her words: “Damn, girl, you can write! But you can’t plot for shit!”

Heh.

Anyway, she didn’t buy that story either, though she loved it, and she spent another hour talking to me to help me work out the plot issues. She believed in me, believed in my writing, and told me I’d better not ever give up. I said I wouldn’t, and I told her that someday, I would sell something to her.

Not long after that, I got The Call. No, not from Kate Duffy at Kensington, but from Red Sage. They were who I’d sent that novella manuscript to. It was a Saturday, and on Monday I called Kate and told her I’d sold.

I seriously think she was as happy as I was.

So that was my first sale. Flesh To Fantasy (affiliate link) released in December 2006 in Secrets Volume 18.

And you know what? I did sell to Kensington. A few months ago, just before Kate passed away, I was invited to write a novella for them for inclusion in an anthology. Though Kate wasn’t the one to buy it, I somehow think she had a hand in it.

Just like she had a hand in my very first sale.

***

I’m proud of my ePublishing roots, but I’ve always hungered for that Holy Grail of writing, a New York contract. In 2007, my agent (the wonderful Deidre Knight) encouraged me to develop something in the paranormal subgenre. I love history, so I decided to build a modern world steeped in historical traditions with telekinetic heroes and telepathic villains. The proposal went out in late spring 2008 and the wait began.

One October Sunday afternoon, I was playing with my new phone. Not a good use of writing time, but I did find some cool ringtones. I decided to get cute and use When You Wish Upon a Star for my agent’s number. Keep in mind we email, she NEVER calls me. Nonetheless, I was pleased with my non-writing efforts.

The next day, I was trying resolve a troublesome caller issue with a colleague. Suddenly in the background I hear When You Wish Upon a Star playing. I ignore it. Seconds later, I connect the dots. With a loud gasp, I tell my colleague to handle the caller because my agent is on the phone! Now my cell phone was in my purse, which was locked away in a cabinet, and my keys were hidden under a stack of papers. Files flew into the air (okay not into the air, but my neat and orderly desk wasn’t so neat and orderly anymore) as I scrambled to find my keys. A moment later, I manage to bend the key in the lock. Makes it a little tough to open a cabinet. By the time I get to the phone, I’ve missed the call. I call back, and Deidre says she has news and to stay calm (she knows me so well).

The minute she says Cindy Hwang at Berkley is interested in my Sicari series, I let out this whoop that had my co-workers looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I remember trembling so badly I could barely hold the phone, and I was pacing like a caged lion trying to keep my emotions under control. Hard to do when there’s this incredible sense of elation surging through your body, which is almost numbing in its intensity. Cindy had asked to speak with me before finalizing things, and I was frantically trying to remember what was in the bloody proposal.

You see, I’d put the paranormal aside to rework Kismet, and my Sicari heroes were a faint blip on my radar screen. Talk about terror.When we talked, I stumbled my way through the conversation, trying to appear knowledgeable about my series. Fortunately, Cindy forgave my cluelessness. Better yet, she loved my voice. Major swoon. After our conversation, Deidre called to say the offer was official. Selling off proposal is exciting, but I’d barely come off that high when Cindy contracted my January release, Kismet, and another historical. Five books contracted in such a short time span still makes my head spin. The memory of that first call from New York is a constant reminder that I’m one lucky writer to have landed at Berkley with Cindy as my editor. When I think about it, perhaps the real Holy Grail for me wasn’t “the call.” I’m thinking it’s more about finding a publisher and editor who loves and believes in your work. I’ve been fortunate in that respect from my very first sale to New Concepts Publishing and subsequent sales to Samhain. Having people believing in your work is truly a blessing, whether it’s that “first email” or that “first call.”

***

I first began working on Ash, my debut YA novel, in September 2001. Ash’s official publication date is Sept. 1, 2009. That’s eight years between first inspiration and actual existence on a bookstore shelf — eight years and about eight drafts of my retelling of Cinderella.

But the story of my first sale doesn’t begin with Ash. Like many writers, I’ve been writing down stories since I was a child. But even though I wrote three fantasy novels when I was a teenager (yep, I was a geek!), I didn’t entirely believe that I could become a “professional writer.”

My grandmother was a writer, and her brother had been a journalist. My great-uncle was a writer, too. My mother was — and still is — a musician. But I had come to the U.S. from China when I was three years old, and I grew up being taught that I needed to get a job and support myself financially.

So after college I found a job — albeit in book publishing. Unfortunately, I discovered that the business end of books was not the right job for me. I went to graduate school, convinced that I would become an academic and write scholarly books instead.

After four years in grad school, I finally faced facts: not writing creatively was turning me into a bitter, unhappy person. I decided to take a leap of faith, and I left grad school when I was 28 to become a “freelance writer,” knowing pretty much nothing about what that entailed. (Sometimes ignorance really can be bliss.) That’s also when I began to work on Ash.

I decided to retell Cinderella for a few reasons. One of my favorite books was Robin McKinley’s Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and I had always wished that she would retell Cinderella because it was one of my favorite fairy tales. So why not write the book I had always wanted to read? The fact that it was a fairy tale, I figured, meant that I already knew what happened and didn’t have to worry too much about the plot. Famous last words!

The first draft took about two years to write. I think I did three total overhauls of the manuscript before I deemed it ready to be sent out to agents.

By then, I was a full-time entertainment reporter. Remember that “freelance writer” idea? A series of happy accidents, coupled with a lot of hard work, had led me to becoming managing editor at AfterEllen.com, the largest website covering lesbians and bisexual women in the media — kind of like a queer Jezebel.com.

I had some contacts with authors who gave me permission to send my query letter to their agents. But I also read the agent listings at AgentQuery.com and in the Writer’s Marketplace. It was one of the agents I found on AgentQuery — Laura Langlie — who, eight months after I sent her my query, offered to represent me.

That was one of the happiest days of my life! And that was when my lifelong dream of becoming a novelist suddenly picked up a lot more speed.

In December 2007, Laura asked me to do a few revisions on Ash. In January, I turned them in to her. By February, we had our first offer from a publisher. And then there were several other offers, and suddenly I was facing one of the most difficult decisions I’d ever had to make.

In retrospect, that February was totally surreal. I couldn’t believe how positive these editors were about my book. I remember sitting by the phone in my home office, constantly checking my email, a kind of thick, nervous energy in my belly as I agonized over which offer I should take.

I chose to work with Kate Sullivan, an editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, partially because she really got the book. In Ash, the main character — the Cinderella character — falls in love with another woman rather than Prince Charming. But in Ash’s world, a same-sex romance is just as normal as a heterosexual one. (It’s a fantasy novel!) So Kate understood that Ash was not a coming-out story; it’s a coming-of-age story.

I had been so worried that Ash would be rejected or misunderstood by the mainstream publishing industry. But it wasn’t. And so far, the response to the book has been wonderful. Ash was selected by Kirkus as a Best Young Adult Book of 2009, and it is now a finalist for the ALA’s William C. Morris YA Debut Award.

I couldn’t be more thrilled that so many readers have understood that the fact that the main character turns out to be gay is not a problem at all; it’s as natural as falling in love.

***

Although I was actually published for the first time in the spring of 1982 and have written almost fifty novels, the truth is that every book is, in one way or the other, a first book, a first sale.

For one thing, it’s thrilling to know publishers and readers (hopefully reviewers too!) like my work. That excitement never goes away, nor does the first time I see that book “in the flesh,” that is, in paper or audio book format. An old telephone company ad urged customers to “Reach out and touch someone.” That’s the way I react each time I have a new sale or see my new book. I feel I and my characters are reaching out to readers.

Secondly, there is something new and special about each book. MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE is very important to me for several reasons. It is the first book I ever wrote in first person, where the heroine tells her own story. I found it a fabulous way to really get inside the main character, in this case, to see things through Anne Whateley’s eyes. It makes her tough times and her passionate love for—and arguments with!—Will Shakespeare really come alive. It also puts the author and the reader right there, up close and personal in the heroine’s life. We suffer with her and triumph with her. We see Tudor London with her for the first time, we understand her admiration for the ultimate rock star of the day—Queen Elizabeth I. It was such a powerful way to tell a story that I used first person in my next historical novel, THE QUEEN’S GOVERNESS, which will also be released this winter.

Lastly, MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE carries the impact of a first sale for me in that it is a story I have been wanting to tell for years. I love visiting England and reading English history, especially the Tudor era. I used to teach Shakespeare in high school where the students put on an Elizabethan Festival each year, including dancing, jousting, play scenes—and a (mock!) beheading. I find all the main characters so compelling that I had to tell the real story of Shakespeare in love.

And when I held MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE with its beautiful cover in my hands the first time, I was as thrilled as I was with my first sale years ago.

***

I read somewhere that it takes the “average” author five years and five manuscripts to sell their first book. Of course, we all think we’re not average, so when I started writing with the intent to publish, I was sure I’d be above the curve.

STOLEN FURY was my fifth manuscript. The first few books I wrote were learning experiences, and while fun, I knew they weren’t “the ones” even before I finished them. When I wrote STOLEN FURY, I knew. There was just something about it that struck me as different, and before I even typed “The End” I knew it would someday sell. I subbed it to agents, landed my fabulous agent and she started shopping the book around. But, of course, publishing is not easy to break into, especially when what you write (in this case adventure) is enough outside what’s selling in the genre (at the time, dark and gritty suspense) to make things difficult. However, as we all know, it only takes one editor to fall in love with a book, and that’s what I was hoping for.

My agent called me sometime near the end of 2007 and told me that she’d met this fabulous editor at a conference who she thought I’d get along well with and wondered how I felt about subbing to her. I said sure and away the manuscript went. A few weeks passed – and at this point I’d pretty much forgotten about that conversation altogether – when I got a phone call from my agent asking if I had a medium-length synopsis for STOLEN FURY and could send it to her. This was a Friday. I was packing up to head off to the beach with my writer’s group. Of course, I said “yes”, then proceeded to stress because I couldn’t even remember if I HAD a medium length synopsis. Luckily, I found one, sent it to my agent and took off for the beach.

Now, I’m neurotic like (thankfully) most writers, so instead of a fun-filled relaxing writing weekend, I managed to turn it into a “here, stress along with me!” weekend. My writing pals are awesome though and did a great job (or at least tried) keeping my mind off what was happening in New York. And I did manage to have fun.

So Monday morning rolled around. No word. Preparing myself for the worst, I figured, “You know, if I didn’t hear today it must mean they’re not really interested.” Then Tuesday hit. And my agent called with the offer. I think I was too stunned to say much. Several times my agent asked, “You are excited about this, right?” and I’m pretty sure I nodded (which she couldn’t see over the phone) and muttered, “uh, huh.” But my head was spinning with all the info she’d passed on to me. I always thought that first offer would be a screaming, Oh my God! moment. But it wasn’t. There were too many things suddenly to think about. And since I still knew my agent was going to dispute contract points, I didn’t want to get too excited too soon.

I called my hubby, my critique partner, told my closest friends about the offer. And while it would be glamorous to say I went out for a champagne dinner to celebrate, well, that’s just not the truth. My writer friends love to joke about this, because, well, it’s just plain funny…but the truth is I celebrated my first offer by cleaning the bathrooms in my house. At the time, it was something I could do that I had control over, and it kept me from freaking out. And at the time, everything else just seemed totally out of my hands.

A few days later, my agent called back with the contract points all worked out and after she finished telling me all the “business” stuff and I hung up, I did scream and squeal. And when my editor called a few days after that, THAT’s when the entire sale became real to me.

Five years and five manuscripts after I first started writing. Am I average? As far as sale length goes, yeah, I guess so. But when I listen to writer friends talk about the years they struggled and the numerous manuscripts they wrote, I consider myself extremely lucky.

STOLEN FURY released from Dorchester a year ago (12.30.09) and was followed by STOLEN HEAT (book 2) in August 2009 and STOLEN SEDUCTION (book 3), which just released this past week. The day before STOLEN SEDUCTION released I had one of those “WOW” moments thinking a year ago I was technically unpublished and now I have three books on the shelf. It’s truly amazing how things can change in a year.

In May 2010 I have a whole new paranormal series starting with the release of MARKED, book one in my Eternal Guardians Series. I’m looking forward to writing both paranormals and romantic adventures and I’m thrilled I’m able to do both. Honestly, I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.

You can visit my website at www.elisabethnaughton.com for more information about me and my books.

****

First Sale: Try, Fail, Try Again, Fail Better�(did someone already use this heading?)

When I first started writing with the intention to publish, I did not know anything about publishing. I didn’t even know how to write a proper query or what a synopsis was. All I knew was that I was going to rock the book world, baby! I was a genius, and surely it would not take too long for everyone else to figure that out.

That was in um, 2003.

Someone I knew from an online writing forum had just sold a book to Luna, Harlequin’s new fantasy line. What a coincidence! I’d just written a big fat fantasy. With shape-changers and a one-eyed hero and some world-building that probably didn’t make sense but would all be explained in book two of a seven book cycle…Not that I let things like that deter me! So I wrote my three page query letter and stuffed it in an envelope with my twenty page synopsis and the first three chapters of my 150,000 word opus. And I put a teeny tiny envelope in as the SASE, because they wouldn’t need to send it back to me. They’d take one look and fall in love. Right? Right. Who needed to spend all that postage. Not me, budding publishing rockstar.

Yeah. Form rejection, 3 months later. They’d shoved all the pages in a big Harlequin envelope and sent everything back to me.

I was puzzled by the form rejection. What was wrong with what I’d sent? They published fantasy – I’d written a fantasy. HELLO. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like ’rejection’ stop me, though. I flipped through the package and noticed that the first two pages of the synopsis had coffee stains on them, but the rest of it was untouched. Okay, so they’d stopped reading at two pages in.

I could fix that.

So I started asking around. And everyone that I asked pretty much choked on their coffee and pointed out that the proper synopsis is much, much shorter than twenty single-spaced pages. That one page was the ideal length.

I could do a one page synopsis! Just, uh…not with that novel. So I wrote another book. And then another book.

That last novel was something special in my mind. It was modern day fantasy, full of valkyries and a smack-talking horse, and dead people and it was unique. I loved it and NO ONE HAD DONE VALKYRIES YET. I was a genius. Stardom was at hand!

And then I opened the May 2005 Romantic Times Magazine and saw an article about Kresley Cole…who was writing a series on valkyries.

I admit it. I cried for 3 days. Kresley Cole – dream crusher. She’d stolen my idea.

After I had a nice long (3-day) cry, I got over it, and decided to query my book anyhow. I got lots of form rejections, but this time my package was better. A one page query, and a one page synopsis. A polished sample chapter or three. And I got really close, but no one wanted a funny, unromantic book about a modern-day valkyrie. Half the agents I sent it to didn’t even know what a valkyrie was (I bet they do now, though).

So I wrote another book. Another silly book, but this time a little sexier. About a gal who was transformed into a succubus and had not one, but two hot men. Another original idea! Badass = ME.

And then I saw that some ’nobody’ named Richelle Mead sold her succubus series. And then Jackie Kessler sold hers right after.

(Cue 3 more days of crying.)

But I sent it out anyhow. Copycat, shmopycat. I loved the book, and it was fun and maybe a little funny. It was the best thing I’d written, and I didn’t want to give up on this one just because someone else had the same idea I had. And after some revising and rewriting…I had an agent. Who told me that it was okay to write a story starring the same paranormal creature as someone else. Really! People did it all the time! (Novel concept, I know.) And after some submissions and some waiting…it sold.

And it’s finally here.

***

Yes, there’s a story there.

Like most authors, I’ve written pretty much all my life. But I thought of it as a hobby until I was over thirty. Then I decided to make a career of it, and began studying both the craft and the business. With no connections, and mostly clueless, I ignored the odds against me and plunged into the fray. Each year I wrote a novel-length manuscript, attended workshops, and shopped around that year’s manuscript to agents and publishers. I learned over the years the ins and outs of submitting, the formatting preferences of editors, and how to approach editors and agents in a professional manner. I got a day job writing for the local newspaper, and meanwhile kept writing novel-length fiction.

About three years into the process, after receiving nothing but form rejections and offers from vanity publishers and scam agents, I received a letter from an editor at Ace Books, Ginjer Buchanan. It was a rejection, but it suggested changes in the manuscript. Changes? To my manuscript? I was overjoyed! She’d not only read the proposal, but she had taken enough interest in it to comment on it!

By the time I received this letter, I’d already moved on to the next project and no longer had much interest in revising the previous manuscript. But I had another one ready to go, and so I sent an outline and chapters in hopes of interesting this editor.

No go for that one, either, but I received another letter of encouragement. I was off to complete another manuscript.

Another two or three manuscripts later, I’d still not made a sale, but she was recommending me to other editors she thought might be able to use my work. I just hadn’t sent the right story at the right moment.

I kept writing, and kept submitting. Now she was getting first perusal on everything I wrote.

Then, after six years and six encouraging rejections, I met Ginjer in person at a fan convention. Complete coincidence, but we were both fans of The X-Files, and there was this very small convention in New Jersey. I’d interviewed David Duchovny for Starlog Magazine, and was attending as a guest panelist. Of course I didn’t thrust a manuscript in Ginjer’s face; I didn’t need to. I introduced myself, and spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the convention. There was plenty of time later to send more proposals. At the time, Ginjer was editing the Quantum Leap novels, and since I was a fan I had a lot of ideas.

Now I was writing proposals for uncompleted manuscripts. Still no sale, but I felt like I had discovered a niche. And one time when Ginjer had a slot to suddenly fill, she called me and asked what I had in my notebook for Sam Beckett. It happened I had six ideas (how did she know that?), and I pitched three of them to her. She chose one, and I worked it into a proposal.

No sale, but I didn’t stop writing and continued to submit. I completed a manuscript for the Highlander series I submitted to another editor. No sale, but no rejection, either.

So finally, after a dozen years of writing and shopping around a manuscript a year, plus eight proposals for uncompleted manuscripts, I finally began to lose hope. I’d been submitting to Ginjer for nine years, and though she’d been encouraging, there was still no sale. I’d run out of angles to try. I emailed her and asked, “What do you think about action/adventure?”

She dismissed it as not a good idea for me, and said, “Why do you ask?”

I told her I was pretty much at the end of my rope and didn’t know what to try next. She replied with the suggestion of time travel to historical Scotland.

Hm…sort of Highlander meets Quantum Leap. Hm…

The idea tweaked me. She sent me some books to read. I bought some research books to study. I went to work, and a couple of months later I sent an outline and three chapters about a twentieth century guy who grabs an enchanted sword and gets sent to the Jacobite Rebellions of the early eighteenth century.

Then I waited.

Three months later, I mentioned to Ginjer that in three months I was going to a writing workshop and would be presenting the proposal to other editors. She had exclusive perusal until March 12.

I waited.

Friday, March 12, 1999. I was due to leave on Sunday for the workshop. I spent the day deeply depressed because I had to face the fact that Ginjer wasn’t going to buy my book. Again. Once again I was at a loss as to how to proceed from there. At four in the afternoon my time—nearly clock-out time in New York—I was bemoaning this fact to my husband when I got a call waiting beep on the phone.

It was Ginjer, ready to make an offer for Son of the Sword.

There aren’t really words to explain how my life changed that day. That moment. After twelve years, twelve completed manuscripts and eight proposals, after rejection after rejection after rejection, I was finally a real author.

“Her Mother’s Daughter” is my tenth publication with Ginjer. We’ve done two historical fantasy series for Ace Books and three books about women of the Tudor era for Jove and Berkley. There is absolutely no denying that I’m a better writer than I would have been without her guidance.

And…oh, yeah, I did work my ass off.

***

I started writing because I was miserable and it helped to take my mind off my troubles. That’s all.

Well, that’s how it started…

A good book always reminds me of a magic carpet. As a reader, I leap on board with enthusiasm, but unlike most authors, I’ve never been driven by the innate desire to write. In fact, once I left school, I didn’t write any fiction at all, though I certainly thought about it now and then.

When I hit rock-bottom (I’m fine now, by the way), reading didn’t cut it any longer, but heavens, writing did! The process of creation was so empowering, so astonishingly vivid, that once I started I couldn’t stop. My first attempt was a category romance for the sole reason that they’re short. Even sixty thousand words seemed like Everest of effort—which just goes to show how little I knew about myself. Nor did I bother to glance at any of the Harlequin guidelines, despite the fact I’d only read a handful of category romances in my life.

The end result will live forever in the sock drawer, but it placed third in the Clendon Contest (run by the Romance Writers of New Zealand) and earned a very nice rejection from Harlequin. It’s funny now to look back and remember how annoyed and disappointed I was with that wonderful, encouraging two page rejection letter!

I discovered Romance Writers of Australia, a fabulous organization of which I remain a proud member. I found critique partners, entered contests and attended conferences. I gravitated to fantasy and then to erotic fantasy. Gift of the Goddess was a personal challenge, to see if I could move past my inhibitions. No problem, rather to my surprise, though it soon became clear that squashing my inner ‘good girl’ was the easy part!

I pitched Gift of the Goddess to Suz Gower from Ellora’s Cave at an Australian conference. Some months of silence later, I took a deep breath and sent a follow-up email. Suz’s response was enthusiastic, but not definite. She’d get back to me in a week, she said. Huh! I still don’t know how I lasted thirteen whole days before I cracked and emailed again, but I did.

When Suz called, I was at work, so I left the office and went outside. My knees shook so hard it’s a miracle I didn’t fall down the stairs. Suz was delightful, but she didn’t say straight out she wanted my book. After some time, it dawned on me that a ten minute discourse on title changes probably meant something good. In the end, I gathered my courage and asked. And hey, I was right!

Even better was the cover—the best cover any newbie author ever had, thanks to Syneca, staff artist at Ellora’s Cave. I refer to him simply as Mr Gorgeous and he’s still my screensaver, more than three years later.

That was Call Number One. (I’m kind of double-dipping here.) Call Number Two was from Wendy McCurdy, Executive Editor at Berkley.

Is it any wonder I consider romance writers to be the best, most generous people in the world? Without my knowledge, a fellow author recommended me to both her editor (Wendy) and her agent. This wonderful, discerning woman wasn’t my critique partner or even a close friend, though we’re certainly friendly now! These days, I buy her champagne at every possible opportunity.

But when Wendy asked if I had anything for her to read, I couldn’t believe my bad luck. The opportunity of a lifetime and I was all written out, having just handed Tailspin over to Ellora’s Cave. In desperation, I sent the first few chapters of Tailspin and an abbreviated proposal for The Flame and the Shadow, not much more than a couple of paragraphs.

Fortunately for me, Wendy must have liked the idea of a dark hero with a sentient shadow, because she rang early in the morning (Australian time) with an offer. What a fabulous feeling it must be to deliver someone their heart’s desire! I suspect editors swap ‘call stories’ during coffee break. At the very least, they must have a quiet chuckle from time to time.

Wendy was so kind and patient with me, because all I could say was, “Are you sure? Are you really sure?” Duh. What on earth would I have done if she’d admitted she wasn’t?

In a lovely coincidence, it was my wedding anniversary and also a public holiday, so My Beloved and I went out for lunch by the water. I no longer even remember exactly which restaurant. I spent the whole day in a sort of delirium.

Later, of course, I wrote a proper proposal for the quartet that comprises the Four-Sided Pentacle series. It nearly killed me, planning not being my best thing, but it was totally worth it.

It’s been eight years since I was so unhappy I had to invent an imaginary world to live in. That’s no longer necessary though I’m delighted to say the Muse and I still visit there every day. We do it for pleasure and joy, with a healthy dollop of fun mixed in for good measure.

Best Wishes,

Denise

http://www.deniserossetti.com/

***

I’ll say this up front: I didn’t expect any of this. I do not seriously plan to win the lottery. I did not seriously expect to become published. Both, in my opinion, had similar odds.

Like most authors, I’ve written since I was a kid. The requisite number of truly bad manuscripts lurk in my closet (not as dramatic as skeletons, but scary in their own way), and I dreamed a lot of pleasant pipe dreams along the way. Author swanning through the foyer of the Met, signing autographs and showing off couture. Author pondering Roman ruins by moonlight, thinking literary thoughts. Author pondering a second Mediterranean villa. I had little notion of what a book contract really meant. (Hint: tons of work).

I did some freelancing for a local arts paper, which in the course of an article led me to the Romance Writers of America. I wasn’t writing romance at the time, but I joined the RWA primarily because they could answer one important question for me: What do you do with the manuscript once it’s finished? In all the years I’d been writing, I’d never made it to that next vital step. Before long, I had a critique group and started entering contests. I was so thrilled to find captive readers (mwa-ha-ha!), I didn’t think much further than getting a nice contest score.

It never occurred to me that I might win.

Cue the dramatic music, part one: I won my chapter contest and, as part of the prize, sent the entry and a few other partials (including what would become my first paranormal romance, RAVENOUS) to a New York editor—and then forgot about it. I was busy with other things. Ladies and gentlemen, be careful where you send that manuscript. It could start to have adventures of its own.

Cue the dramatic music, part two: Imagine my astonishment when the editor phoned and said that (a) she’d like to offer me a contract and (b) did I have an agent? My immediate emotional response, rather than bluebirds and rainbows, was blind, abject panic. Whaddyoumeancontract???? Followed closely by: Is this a joke?

Yep, I was caught with my authorial pants down. I wasn’t even sure what an agent did. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. The numbers that the editor rattled off at me meant nothing. Fortunately, I knew enough to disengage and regroup. I could deal with the details once I’d stopped hyperventilating.

There was a long list of things I needed to do. Web site? Cover quotes? A marketing plan? Publicity? Book signings? Innocent lamb that I was, I had always assumed there were staff, kind of like angels on high, who swooped in and did that stuff. Nope. With the grand prize of seeing my name in print came my own little business empire, and all those tasks were Up To Me. Terrifying? Yes. Empowering? Surprisingly, yes.

And here I am. Along the way, I learned the necessity of positive thinking. We always prepare for failure, but rarely prepare for success. Take it from me: nothing is impossible. The universe sometimes has a great sense of humour. Know what you want, and be ready to embrace it.

I’m celebrating the second book of my Dark Forgotten series, SCORCHED (Signet Eclipse, December 1, 2009), and I’ll give away a copy to one commenter.

Plus, check out my “send an ecard, help an animal” page (http://www.sharonashwood.com/gvac.php) where you can send free ecards and help abandoned animals receive veterinary care!

***

Let’s just say the exultant cry was no doubt heard for miles when I got The Call in March of 2006.
It all started close to twenty years ago. I’d decided to quit a stressful accounting position to stay home for a little while with my—then—one year old daughter. One afternoon, I sat down to finish a LaVyrle Spencer historical romance. I remember closing the book and, contented smile firmly in place, thinking, “I could do that.”

Right. LaVyrle made it seem so easy.

I set out in my typical over-achieving, perfectionistic manner to tackle this craft of writing and get published. I knew nothing. And I mean nothing.

My first readers, mostly family, were patience and kind, which gave me the courage to join my first critique group. They weren’t so Minnesota nice. But they taught me so much. I was an eager student, swallowing my pride and absorbing every tidbit of wisdom any reader, published author, agent, or editor bothered to offer. I worked and learned, went to conferences and entered contests and got deservedly sucky scores.

When I finalled in the Golden Heart contest for the first time in 1994, I thought this is it. A month later, the day I came home from the hospital with my second child, I got my first agent. The sale seemed inevitable.

Only no publisher would touch that book. Who knew that setting a romance in the Middle East killed a story (back then) from an editor’s perspective?

The let down was terrible. I’m not a quitter, but the Golden Heart is it, baby. If you can’t sell after that, what’s the point? I cried. I got angry. I couldn’t write. I was paralyzed, scared to death of putting tremendous effort into something that would once again go nowhere. Fear is my worst enemy. I quit writing for five years.

Over time, creative urges sabotaged me. I loved writing. Maybe a more marketable setting was the ticket. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care if I got published. (Yeah, right. I’m the seventh of eight children. I crave attention.)

I wrote my next book for fun, something that excited me. It didn’t do great in contests. It didn’t sell. It didn’t get me an agent. But I’d enjoyed the process, so I wrote another book. Lo and behold it finalled in the Golden Heart, along with a previous book. I was a double finalist. This was it. I had three agents offering me representation. Three! But I’d been in nearly this exact position ten years earlier. I knew what might not happen.

Sure enough, during the course of the next year, my worst fears were realized. In one of the most agonizingly slow processes know to womankind, one editor after another turned my book down. Fear threatened to knock the legs out from under me again.

My agent stuck with me, bless her heart. Editors loved my writing despite not being able to buy my book, so she encouraged me to rework a previous story. I was skeptical, but I followed through. In fact, I rewrote that darned manuscript three times for three different editors. Finally, I got it right.

Ten years of fairly serious writing, four completed manuscripts, three Golden Heart finals, a Maggie win, too many regional contest finals to count, three critique groups, two agents, and one study group later, I finally became a published author.

The icing on the cake? My first book, TREASURE, was a double finalist in Romance Writers of America’s RITA contest. It was up for Best First Book (the only series romance amidst a group of well-deserving single title romances) and won the RITA for Best Series Romantic Suspense.

TREASURE hit the shelves in February of 2007 and I’m currently writing my tenth book for Harlequin. As frustrating as my journey was, it was the journey I needed. I’m not sure I could have written my Mirabelle Island Superromance series without the bumps and bruises I earned along the way.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely on your own publishing journey. Stay true. The Call is just the beginning. This is a crazy business, isn’t it?

THEN COMES BABY, the third in my Mirabelle Island series will be on bookshelves December 8 and the first two in the series are still available for order.

Helen
http://www.helenbrenna.com/

***

I took my first crack at writing a novel at an age when my most of my contemporaries were figuring out their Social Security benefits and considering the merits of taking up golf full time.

Not to put too fine point in it, I was more than a little gray. As it turned out I was also more than a little lucky.

While I’d been a writer all my life, I’d never tried fiction before. Not so much as a single short story.   I’d spent more than twenty-five years as a copywriter and creative director at several of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. I wrote TV and print campaigns for a long list of major clients that included the US Army (“Be All You Can Be”), Lincoln/Mercury (“The Shape You Want To Be In”) and Advil (“Advanced Medicine For Pain”).  After I left the agency business in the late nineties I put in several years freelancing for clients in the financial services and healthcare industries. I wrote articles, brochures, annual reports, and, for the last couple of years, glossy coffee table histories of major institutions.

At the end of 2005 I finished an assignment writing the history of a major hospital based in Portland, Maine. I had nothing else scheduled.  I’d always thought I’d like to take a crack at writing a thriller and I decided if I was ever going to do it, this seemed like as good a time as any.

So I asked my wife how she would feel if I stopped working for a year, we lived off our savings (this was, of course, before the 2008 market crash) and I wrote my first novel. If I couldn’t sell it, I told her, I could always go back to writing institutional histories.

“Is this something you really want to do?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I really do.”

“Well then,” she said, “You’d better get started.”

And so I set to work.  I bought a bunch of books on how to write a novel. Write Away by Elizabeth George and Stephen King’s On Writing were probably the most helpful. I joined a writing workshop led by a woman who taught creative writing at a nearby university. And I started developing plot ideas and a lead character for a thriller series based in my hometown of Portland, Maine.

For the next eighteen months I wrote and revised, wrote and revised.  I finished a polished draft of THE CUTTING in June, 2007.

The rest, amazingly, turned out to be easy. And extremely serendipitous.  I mentioned to a neighbor of mine that I’d finished the book and she asked me what I planned to do next. I said I was going to start looking for an agent. She said her sister had gone to elementary school with a woman who was now a literary agent in New York and asked if I like her to contact the woman.  I said sure, not really expecting anything to come of it.

I googled the agent’s name and discovered she was one of the top mystery and thriller agents in the business, representing writers like Tess Gerritsen, Lisa Gardner and Julia Spencer-Fleming. She told my neighbor to have me to send her a cover letter and the first eighty pages of THE CUTTING.  I did.

A week later she emailed me to request the rest of the manuscript. Two weeks after that she offered to represent me. After a couple of months of further revisions she sent the manuscript out to six or seven major publishers. We got two offers including the one we took for a two book deal from St. Martin’s/Minotaur.

Yes, I believe I’m a good writer and that THE CUTTING is a good book. I think it’s fast paced, well-written and exciting to read. Most of the critics and most of my readers seem to agree.  It’s gotten terrific reviews.

Still I know I was extraordinarily lucky to have everything fall in place so quickly.  I’d be a fool to think otherwise.   Maybe the gods simply took a look at all my gray hair and decided if I was ever going to become a novelist they’d better hurry things along a bit.

***

I remember getting The Call really well because I was sitting with my dad in front of my computer, watching CNN.com as John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate. I hadn’t thought too much about where or when it would happen––if it would happen––but I never would have imagined my father being the first person to know simply from the way I said hello on the phone. It was August of 2008 and it had been three months since I’d emailed the complete version of my book to Avon Red.

And I say complete, because they had already seen two of the novellas of the single author anthology I had submitted.

In January of ‘08, I had the idea for a short erotic story, which started with this one vivid interlude. From those images, a question formed: could a solid, soulmate-style relationship between two people develop after a one-night stand? The project ended up being a novella called Against the Wall, which was fun and fast paced and totally different from anything I had written previously.

I knew Avon took unagented submissions (and at the time, I was unagented) and that on the submission page it said that their Red imprint accepted novellas. So I wrote a query letter. Two weeks later, I received an email saying I should send it in. I sent the story by US post with tracking. Didn’t actually check if it arrived until two weeks later. Found out that it never arrived. Decided to Fed Ex another copy. I think it was about a couple weeks after that that I received an email again saying the editor loved it but couldn’t do anything with just one novella. So I wrote three more, creating a series in one book, and kept sending them in as I finished them…

At this point I was living in a relative writer’s isolation. I hadn’t yet joined RWA, I hadn’t yet stumbled upon that wonderful community, Romance Divas. All I had was myself, my amazing sister as beta reader, and my husband. I knew that the editor liked my voice, and I liked my stories, only the last two stories were a bit different. One was much darker and dealt with some issues I wasn’t certain would fly over well. And the last story contained more of a micro-conflict that the usual romance plot. Over summer I think I drove my sister crazy discussing feminist theory and all the ways people could hate my work.

On These Silken Sheets, the single-author anthology that includes all four erotic historical novellas, was released on September 8, 2009 by Avon Red. Labeled as erotica but with distinct HEAs, On These Silken Sheets brings up that persistent question of what exactly is erotic romance. But no matter how the stories are labeled, writing romance has been a fascinating, fun ride so far, and I absolutely love the romance community!

***

The older I get, the more I realize that I’ve always been a late bloomer. At age 25 I was divorced, a single mom with three children—and not much of an education. So I joined the ranks of college kids much younger than I and ended up earning a degree in secretarial science. I remarried, worked as a legal secretary and at age 34 discovered I would bloom once again—graduating from college a few years later as a Registered Nurse.

During all of these years, I wrote. No, I didn’t write for publication. I wrote because I had to write. I had been writing all of my life—volumes of pages to pen pals around the world, diaries and journals. Writing was my passion but never once did I consider that it could also be a career.

Like my mother, I’ve always been an avid reader, and it was my mother who provided stacks of books to keep me entertained on those cold, snowy, New England weekends. I was an only child and lacked siblings, but I never lacked friends thanks to those stories. During those years of raising my own children, I devoured the women’s fiction novels my mother would let me borrow—Barbara Taylor Bradford, Belva Plain, Susan Howatch, Rona Jaffe and many others.

By the time I was working as a critical care nurse in the Boston area, my youngest child was 15, and I was beginning to seriously focus on my writing. My life experiences contributed to this new phase in my life, but along the way I had also taken a creative writing course at college the summer after my 95-year-old grandmother passed away. She had come from Poland through Ellis Island to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1908 and I had a story to tell. That was my first attempt at a manuscript and nothing breeds success like success. My professor critiqued the first three chapters and said she could feel the story pouring out of me. The praise and encouragement she gave me pushed me to finish the manuscript. Finish it I did, but I put it aside a year later when my husband was transferred to Florida with his job.

I quickly realized that while I loved to write, I had no knowledge of the book industry itself. I also needed to learn much more about the craft of writing. I began attending writers’ conferences throughout the year. Eventually, I was asked to write travel articles for Bonjour Paris based on my many trips to Paris and throughout France—but through the eyes of a fictional canine character. It was a challenge and the positive feedback from readers made me decide to attempt another novel. Rejections arrived—but I still kept writing.

When my husband retired four years ago, we moved to the very small island of Cedar Key, off the west coast of Florida. I knew I was in my element. It didn’t take long before the quirky and lovely characters in my small town and the beauty of the island itself inspired me to write another manuscript. More disappointment followed—this time in the form of agents, but I never gave up. I couldn’t. I strongly believed in my story and my characters and felt eventually somebody else would also.

I had been a member of Romance Writers of America for seven years and decided to attend the conference in Dallas two years ago. I attended the panel for Kensington Books and heard the editor say she was looking for women’s fiction. When I returned home, I sent her the first three chapters of my Cedar Key story. Five months later I received an e-mail from her assistant requesting a full manuscript. It was the closest I’d come to acceptance from a traditional, New York publisher, but disappointment had taught me to simply let go and just keep writing. Two months later, I was pretty convinced that the Kensington exchange was just another disappointing interlude in my pursuit of becoming a published author.

Then in late February of 2008, an e-mail arrived from that very same Kensington editor saying she had good news—she wanted to offer me a two-book contract and would it be convenient to call me later that afternoon. Yes! After such a long, circuitous route, I finally had gotten the call! And earlier this year my editor phoned again—this time to offer me another contract. I’m now writing a Christmas novella in an anthology headlined by Fern Michaels, coming November 2010, around the same time as book number two in my Cedar Key series.

So, yes, I may be a late bloomer who has dodged her share of rain along the way, but I’m also a firm believer that it’s the rain that fell that ultimately enabled me to bloom, to grow and to develop into what I was meant to become: a published author.

***

In July of 2008, my agent sold my debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, in a two-book deal to Random House. That’s the happy ending. But, as readers, you know that every happy ending is preceded by a testing journey and dark moment, when all seems lost. I’d love to tell you about mine.

In 2002, after years of writing children’s book manuscripts, I decided to try my hand at adult fiction: a romance. I imagined a heroine—a romance languages professor (Maeve)—and a hero—an antiques dealer with an English accent (Noel). I decided to begin the story at an auction house, where my characters would win something. But what? A Javanese keris—a sword with a wavy blade—was on a list of items I’d virtually gathered for Noel’s shop. That seemed interesting; they’d win that.

I wrote my first scene and handed it to a friend, anxious for her good opinion.

“I like it,” she said. “Will the keris be in the rest of the story?”

This? Wasn’t something I’d even considered. But that night, I did some research and learned the keris might be able to affect Maeve’s life in more ways than I ever could’ve imagined. The keris began to play an influential role in the book. Not only that, suddenly Maeve had a twin—Moira—with something to say. Music had butted its way into the spotlight, too.

“This is a romance?” my critique partners asked on a regular basis.

I was no longer sure what it was, but I pressed on, finished the draft, and in late 2003 set out to find an agent. I sent queries; I received rejections. Most were the professional equivalent of “Nice writing, but WTH is this?”

It wasn’t until agent Deidre Knight read my story in early 2004 that I received some helpful advice. There was good news:

“There’s an air of mystery here–almost a gothic kind of feeling to the hush over the story- -that I think gives it a real magic.”

And there was not-so-good news:

“I could be totally wrong, but it almost has a kind of women’s fiction feeling to it, and yet it’s a romance. My gut tells me you probably have a part of you that either wants to write women’s fic, or that ultimately *will* write women’s fic.”

I remember that hot-grief moment so well, because I knew then that Deidre was right. I’d created a square peg. It would never fit in—not unless I changed its composition dramatically.

In 2005, I threw out all but two scenes and began again. I needed to expand on Maeve’s story, keep Noel but learn more about Moira, go deeper with the keris, re-envision everything.

In 2006, I tossed it all out again, started over for a third time.

Yes, I questioned my sanity. What were the chances that I’d ever really be published? But I kept writing and revising because I loved the characters. To ignore them would be like knowing a beloved lay bleeding in a ditch somewhere, when I was the only one who could save them.

I promised you a dark moment, when all seemed lost. Here it comes.

I finished polishing my story in early 2008, knowing it was my best work, and again set out to find an agent. I was shocked when an Important Agent requested my manuscript straightaway, and far less so when he rejected. But he was nice about it. When I asked if he knew anyone who might connect with the work, he named someone within his agency but said she rarely accepted new clients.

Not a lot of hope there, but I wrote a new query, printed another synopsis, mailed my submission. Soon after, Busy Agent’s assistant asked for a partial, then the full.

And then, the strangest thing, I was contacted once again by Important Agent.

“Your story made our assistant cry,” he said. “I’m going to read the full and reconsider. Stay tuned.” Later he emailed me, “Call me. I’d like to talk.” He sent his number.

Now I knew this wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. When agents loved and wanted to represent you, they called *you* to tell you. But this was Important Agent. Maybe he did things differently.

I was nearly bursting with hope when I called, which should’ve been a warning sign; you know what happens with things that want to burst.

“I’m not going to tell you what you’re hoping for,” he said. “Really, I have a lot of questions.”

Pop.

He did have questions, but he also had a lot to say. Unless the story was heavily revised, it was—in his esteemed opinion—unpublishable.

Unpublishable.

That word possesses a thud-like quality, doesn’t it? If ever there was a time I wanted to toss my manuscript in the trash and pretend I’d never dreamed a dream, it was then. Because if he was right, and my story was that flawed, then my gut was flawed—and if you can’t count on your gut, it’s time to hang it up.

The weirdest thing happened then. Somewhere from deep inside my little old self, a voice peeped up, shy at first, weak, then stronger—like the stale and tiny heart of the Grinch swelling to life inside his otherwise vacant chest after he had a realization. And my book—it was like Christmas. It was there, and it had come, and I believed in it.

I remember telling my husband in our kitchen: “No, he’s wrong. Important Agent is wrong. The story is solid, it’s ready. You’ll see.”

And you know what happened next: I wrote a new query, printed another synopsis, mailed my submission to another agent—Elisabeth Weed. And she asked for the partial and then the full, and called me herself to tell me she loved the book. She became my agent, and she sold my book to Random House in a preemptive two-book deal. And I don’t tell you that to brag. I tell you that because I know that you, dear readers, will appreciate a happy ending that proves something we all need to hear: Never, never quit on your dreams.

FTC Advisory Warning: Therese Walsh’s book was provided to the blog by someone (I can’t remember who sent it to us) either the author or publisher. No payment was made for this blog post. By posting this first sale letter, we are not endorsing the book or the author of the post.  We do endorse that First Sale letters are fun to read though.