A Fresh Start (Stephanie Kuehnert)

Back in June, I blogged about how nothing in my writing career (or my life) had gone exactly as planned. In it, I discussed how one of the most wonderful, unexpected surprises was blindly submitting to and becoming a staff writer for an online magazine called, Rookie. I've always thought of myself as a fiction writer so I was shocked by how much I enjoyed writing essays about my teenage life. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I got the idea to assemble those essays into a zine-style memoir, which had just gone on submission the week I wrote that blog. Well, I was even more shocked just FOUR DAYS after I wrote that blog when my agent sent a singing and dancing gorilla telegram to inform me that we'd sold my YA memoir to Julie-Strauss Gabel (a.k.a. my dream editor) at Dutton!!!!

My husband who was in on the surprise, documents my shock in this blurry phone photo

You can read the full story about getting The Call from a gorilla on my personal blog if you like.

I had to wait six, long, painful weeks to share my news with the world, but it was totally worth it when the announcement came out in Publisher's Weekly.

As my readers and readers of that June YAOTL blog entry know, it has been five years since my last book came out--and when I got that call it had been six years and a month since my last sale. It was definitely a long, hard road for me, but now here I am, starting fresh with a new, incredible editor and publisher on a project that I never would have dreamed about at the beginning of my career. It's exciting and terrifying, very much like the beginning of a new school year always felt to me. 

I've taken the summer off from writing. I had lots of visitors, traveled a little bit (I even went whale watching!), and relaxed a ton. But now I have to sit back down at a desk and really get to work. The book was sold on proposal and while about half of it is written there is still a ton to do. Also, much like at the beginning of a school year, I need to get my photo taken! That author photo they used above is my old one... from 2007. New book, new me, and probably a lot of new challenges, but I am ready for them!