***

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.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

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!

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

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.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

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.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

Sometimes I think I took the world’s most boring route to getting The Call. No late night runs across the border. No emergency tracheotomies. No trumpet fanfare.

Instead, it was like a Ken Burns epic: Slow pans across the scene, endless talking heads, a pretty picture, and then a few more slow pans for good measure. Maybe some bagpipes. I’m not complaining, mind you, just sorely tempted to rewrite with more Bruckheimer-style, multi-stage explosions.

Almost a hundred rejections over more than ten years on nearly a million final draft words. The math isn’t exact; I’m rounding to the nearest heartache. On the plus side, my plodding journey did hit most of the cliché mileposts on the path to publication.
1. The first book which must remain forever chained under the bed.

My first attempt at a romance featured leather jerkins, steam locomotives and rubber bands… and it wasn’t steampunk. Who knew you had to pick a time period when you write a book? Needless to say, I began amassing my rejections with that story.

2. Casting about for a “voice.”

Once I learned you had to pick a genre, I accidentally wrote one of each of them. From my initial unfortunate mashup, I traipsed—with rather more enthusiasm than focus—through a couple Regencies, a rom-com and a chick lit, a medieval, a paranormal romance and then a futuristic romantic suspense, and finally an urban fantasy romance. Triangulation isn’t the quickest way to your dream, but you get to explore a lot of ground along the way.

3. Ooh, you’re thisclose.

Eventually, I began to get “good” rejections. Any rejection that didn’t look like a Mad Lib (“Choose an adjective: Desperate. Delusional. Dismayed.”) counted as a good rejection. The letters progressed from specifics about what didn’t work, to permission to send the next project, to requests that I revise and resubmit. These sorts of letters are akin to dangling a raw chicken carcass lower and lower over a crocodile tank. It’s all good fun until someone loses an arm.
4. Playing the contest slut.

In 2007, I entered my local Romance Writers of America chapter writing contest as I did most years, only this time, I won! The grand prize was an American Beauty rose dipped in 24-carat gold. Shiny! Best of all, the final-round judging editor asked to see the complete manuscript. I quickly finished it and sent it off. But I’d long ago learned not to wait on pins and needles. I started another story. Only this time, the editor got back to me and asked if I was willing to do revisions. Was I ever!

With an editor circling the hook, I knew this was a good time to query agents. I’d been rejected by most over the years, so I didn’t get my hopes up. Only this time (I’m sure you’re seeing the pattern now) an agent was willing to read the complete.

I’d spent so long lining up my dominoes – nearly a million of the little suckers – by the time they started to fall down, it smacked of a certain cumulative inevitability.

The editor liked the revisions. The agent believed in the story and wanted to represent it. The editor and agent talked about me behind my back (in a good way) and one morning there was an email in my inbox giving me the details of the contract and letting me know we needed to do a few more revisions.

Bemused, I realized I’d hit yet another cliché of the publishing world:
5. Get back to work.

My editor did call me a couple of emailed revisions later to say, Hey, we never did The Call. And, yeah, this time I squealed.
In celebration of my long-awaited-by-me-and-my-grandmother debut, I’d like to give away signed copies of SEDUCED BY SHADOWS, Book 1 of The Marked Souls, to three random commenters.

FTC Advisory Warning: Jessa Slade’s book was provided to the blog by 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.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• REVIEW: Seduced by Shadows by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

I hate to start with back story, but I was of those kids who made stuff up all the time, so much so that I had a ‘slight problem’ distinguishing imagination from reality, a skill that wasn’t much appreciated throughout my childhood. By the time I moved to California from London in 1998, I’d forgotten about making stuff up, being far too busy bringing up four kids, remembering to drive on the wrong side of the road and hoping everyone had a nice day.

And then, I visited my local bookstore and discovered the ROMANCE section. It was huge! I immediately started reading my way through every single author I could find, and I realized that I had found my people. As I couldn’t work in the U.S, I decided to give myself five years to get a romance novel published.

After the usual traumas of a potential publishing career, horrendous contest entries, rejections, more rejections, editors leaving, agents dying the day I signed with them, and so forth, I finally sat down and wrote three books out of my usual steamy historical so-not-selling style. One of them was in first person. It was also 27K long and was an erotic historical romance, I promptly hid it under my bed

Luckily for me, my mentor coaxed me into sending it to Ellora’s Cave and imagine my surprise when one rainy Sunday afternoon in March, I got an email to say they wanted to publish it. It came out as an e-book in November 2005, four years, and eleven months into my five year deadline, I hadn’t quite intended to be an erotic romance writer, but I seemed to have a knack for it, so I just kept on doing it.

In my publishing experience, things either happen very fast or very slow. In early 2006, I sold my first print book to the now deceased Virgin ‘Cheek’ line. The editor asked me to rewrite the heroine and make her funkier San-Francisco-chic, so I did. That editor left, and the new one, said he was tired of funky hip San Francisco chicks and wanted something else. By the time he finally agreed to buy the book, I’d accidentally deleted version one and had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. I wouldn’t recommend it.

In 2007 I signed with a new agent, the lovely Deidre Knight, and she sent out my first NY proposal for what turned out to be the first two books of the ‘Simply’ series. Within forty-eight hours we had an offer, and I was on my way. As I reminded her recently, since 2007 we’ve sold seven novels and two novellas to Kensington, one to Virgin ‘Cheek’ and three paranormal historicals to NAL.

As you might have noticed, I certainly wasn’t an overnight success. It took me seven years to get to the ‘big time’, and I’m still working at staying there. I’m sure that my ability to dream has helped me keep the faith and deal with all the setbacks, because I’ve realized that a publishing career really is a marathon rather than a sprint. I also know you need good friends, picky critique partners, a great agent and perhaps a dash of luck along the way.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• REVIEW: Simply Wicked by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

Usually it takes very strong margaritas to get me to tell my first sale story. After all these years it still makes me wince at my ignorance. But I started writing before the Internet made it so easy to network with other writers. I didn’t belong to any writing groups or know anyone else who was writing. I just decided one summer I was going to write a book.

After a few months, I deemed it ‘ready’ and opened up the cover of my favorite books (Silhouette Intimate Moments) to see where to send it. I got the phone number for the company in New York and called to tell the receptionist I had a book I wanted to send in and asked how to go about it J

She huffily informed me that they didn’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. I had no idea what that meant, but could tell from her tone that it was a bad thing. She finally gave a long-suffering sigh and told me about tip sheets and query letters. I queried and got an invite to submit and sent it in.

I figured I’d hear in about six weeks. Four months later I got a two-page rejection letter from a senior editor detailing the work’s strengths and weaknesses and inviting me to revise and resubmit. I did, but I’d wised up a little. This time when I sent that first manuscript in, I immediately started another. That was lucky because this time it took six months to get yet another two page rejection letter. Manuscript two had been submitted, so I revised the first yet again and sent it in, too.

When Silhouette called I was actually home from bed with laryngitis. Leslie Wainger’s (then senior editor of Intimate Moments) assistant called. She said she was just tracking down my contact information because—AHEM—I had neglected to include it with my manuscript. She went on to say that she was quite excited because she’d found me in the slush pile. I had no idea what that was, but thought she said flush pile, and that didn’t sound good! She told me Leslie was reading the manuscript as we spoke and that she’d be calling me later.

After we hung up, I started to wonder if I’d dreamed it. Maybe it had just been a Vicks Vapor Rub induced hallucination! But Leslie did call a couple of hours later and make an offer on manuscript two. She asked if I had any other works and I told her I had another in their offices. A couple months later she bought manuscript one, as well. So while I can claim to have sold the first book I wrote, it did go through some extensive surgeries first J

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by Jackie Barbosa
• My First Sale by Robin Owens
• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kat Martin

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

I never wanted to be a writer. Or at least I never knew I did until I sort of stumbled into it. But I always had stories rolling around in my head and when my husband started writing a Western novel, I thought…hummm…maybe I could do that.

I had characters and a plot in mind right away, a western romance because I loved reading them, and coming from a western background (my great grandmother came out in a covered wagon), I was comfortable in that time frame.

But how to actually write?

I needed to learn the basics so I went to the first writers’ conference I could find, which happened to be in Santa Barbara, California, and turned out to be one of the best in the country. I went to all the classes and discovered that one of the speakers gave semi-private lessons on writing, once a week in L.A. My husband and I decided to go.

We made the two-hour drive every week for a year, all the while attending other local conferences and doing our homework on who was publishing what and how to find an agent. I also joined RWA, which I highly recommend.

We were both writing madly, determined to finish our novels. We went to critic groups, went to another writing class, this one two hours away in Fresno.

The books got completed. Now we needed to find a way to sell them.

When we sent our money in for the Fresno Writer’s Conference, fortune intervened. We were told that an agent would be attending the conference and she would be willing to read sixty pages of any attendee’s book.

I desperately needed an agent. Since I have always been a firm believer in taking the extra step, instead of mailing the pages, I dressed in my best leather outfit and drove to Hollywood. Unfortunately the temperature soared to one-hundred degrees that day. By the time I climbed the stairs to the agent’s office, my stomach quaking with nerves, I was drenched in perspiration.

When the agent walked into the reception area, I was almost too nervous to speak. I managed to croak-out in a squeaky little voice, “Hi, I’m Kat Martin. I just happened to be in the neighborhood so I thought I’d drop this by.”

The agent grinned. Clearly, I wasn’t “in the neighborhood.” The good news was, she liked authors who were aggressive about their careers and she was impressed with my moxie. After reading the pages, she took me on as a client. She also decided to represent my husband.

Both of us were turned down by just about every publisher in New York. I was sick to my stomach, terrified my year-and-a-half, twelve-hour-a-day writing effort would be for naught, but the agent wouldn’t give up.

The last publisher among her submissions made an offer for MAGNIFICENT PASSAGE, and I was over the moon.

I was even more excited when they decided to make the book the lead title for their new line of romances. It was my first break in the business and though the company ultimately folded and I was out of work, the lesson was clear.

If you want to succeed as a writer–never give up.

Good luck to all you as-yet unpublished writers.

Never give up! All best wishes, Kat

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Lori Brighton & Giveaway
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

***

When is it time to give up on a dream? After a year? Three years? Six? I’ve often pondered that question on my road to publication.

I wasn’t one of those writers who was reading at three and journaling at five. Honestly, English class and all the grammar rules that came with bored me to tears. But I did read a lot, and my imagination was insatiable. To escape those angst-ridden teenage years, I’d make up stories. By the time I was an adult, I had so many tales clambering around in my head that for my own peace of mind I decided to put one to paper.

I didn’t start writing until about seven years ago. I’d heard those Cinderella stories of people getting published after only a year of trying, and with their first book, no less. Silly enough, I assumed that would be me. Then the rejection letters came from agents and editors…so many I could more than wallpaper a wall. Heck, I could wallpaper my entire house. Finaling in writing contests and getting just enough praise to know that at least someone liked my work kept me going.

About three years ago I started my third book, a historical titled Wild Heart. Call it instinct, but I was positive Wild Heart would be published. Then those familiar rejection letters started arriving. “Don’t worry, it only takes one editor or agent to like your book,” my critique partners and friends would say. Frankly, I thought it was a bunch of bull. After all, if one editor liked your book, wouldn’t they all? Weren’t they one like-minded blob? After getting a rejection from just about every agent and editor I could, I figured Wild Heart was destined to be set aside, and I started to seriously wonder what I was doing wrong.

Contests were my last resort to put Wild Heart in front of editors who normally wouldn’t give it a second glance. When I got the email from the Golden Acorn Contest telling me I’d placed first in the historical category and that Hilary Sares from Kensington wanted to see the full, I knew this was my chance. I immediately printed the 400 pages and mailed it off, hoping for the best. Months went by without a word. I chalked the request up to another rejection and started thinking about the next book I’d write. Then one day the phone rang….

The caller I.D. said New York, but at the time I knew no one there and didn’t answer. A bit later I listened to the message. It was from Hilary, and they were interested in buying Wild Heart. It took me about 30 minutes to return Hilary’s call. Yes, I should have called immediately, but I couldn’t seem to breathe, let alone talk. Suddenly, after years of trying, I was going to be a published author. That call came about a year ago. Now, in only a little over a month, my debut book Wild Heart will be released.

During those six years from the time I started my first book until I got the call, there were many times I wanted to quit, but fortunately I loved writing too much to stop. I didn’t sell in a year, or two, or even three. But I did sell. And all I can think is, thank god I didn’t let those rejection letters bury my dreams.

Just recently on one of my loops someone asked that question: “When is it time to give up?” Most people responded, “When it’s not fun anymore.” But I’d take that response even further. When is it time to give up on a dream? When you can. When you can walk away without a glance back… no regrets, no wondering what could have been.

So what about you? Tell me about a goal or dream you’ve worked hard for, or just leave a comment and email address. Three people will win a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card.

Related Posts:

• My First Sale by James Hayman, Call It Beginners Luck
• My First Sale by Sabrina Darby
• My First Sale by Terri DuLong
• My First Sale by Gary Morgenstein, Better Late Than Early
• My First Sale by Therese Walsh
• My First Sale by Jessa Slade
• My First Sale by Kate Pearce
• My First Sale by Kylie Brant
• My First Sale by Kat Martin
• My First Sale by Claudia Dain

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear Author earns a small referral fee if you use these links to buy Harlequin books. Click only if you are interested. (Thank you to those who have been clicking and buying!).

• It's a Moonlight Madness sale.

• eBooks Backlist Bookshelf: Get 15% Off Newly Released Backlist eBooks! More eBooks just added this month!

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh