Gratitude
Today is all about showing gratitude and there are a lot of
people I am thankful for being a part of my writing life—readers, bloggers, authors,
agents, editors, publishers, publicists, crit partners, and the chupacabra.
There’s one person that I wanted to shine the spotlight on,
because if it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be where I’m at today. Sure,
I might’ve eventually gotten a book deal, but who really knows? I don’t. So
this woman was key in jump-starting my publishing career. She took a chance on
me when no one else would.
I started writing Half-Blood in 2007 and didn’t get the
gonads until 2009/2010 to go out on submission with it. Hey, you can’t fail if
you don’t try, right? I queried about fifty to seventy agents, received a lot
of requests for partials and fulls, collected an iceberg size amount of
rejections, and got very close to representation offers. Some wanted me to take
Half-Blood and make it into an adult book, but I really wasn’t feeling that
idea and by the time I decided to shelve the book (i.e. put it away for a
while) I’d already written Unchained and was working on Cursed. One day, I
entered a query contest on Kate Kaynak’s Disgruntled Bear blog. (Aspiring
authors, entering query contests are an EXCELLENT way of getting feedback, btw)
I entered the Cursed query, and while I didn’t win, I got awesome feedback. And
I also saw that her publishing company, Spencer Hill Press, was open for
submissions.
I thought about Half-Blood, sitting all lonely in my
computer and decided what the hell. I submitted the query and the first ten
pages, expecting a rejection or nothing. There’s a lot of silence in the
publishing world. BUT that same night I
received a request for the full. I sent it, still not expecting much. BUT about
twenty four hours later, I had an offer of publication. That was over three
years ago, and I’m still in shock.
Kate took a huge chance on me. I was a debut author, un-rep’d
at that time and really had no idea what I was doing, but she did take a chance
and because of that, she has my eternal gratitude.
Thank you, Kate!
I so connect with this! I sold my debut to an editor (I was also unrepped), and will always be grateful that he took a chance on me!
ReplyDeleteMy debut novel Covering the Sun with My Hand is about to be published in May or June. I, too, had a similar patterns of 'almosts' until my editor read about three submitted chapters and immediately, the next day, offered a contract. It's meant to be! Best to you!
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