Ok, backing up just a lot: I wrote this contemporary, teen fiction novel way back before Ty was even born. Actually, I think it was around fall of 2008 because the economy fell and the residential treatment center I was working at shut down; thus, I lost my job and had free time! I started by picking up a descriptive, poetic scene I had written about a girl mourning the loss of a loved one to drowning. It was from a couple years before I lost my job (since I graduated college in 2006). Anyway, so I just started having fun with writing a few more scenes, and I shared these pages with Pawnee and Jen, who were intrigued and said, "You gotta keep writing this into a book!" I laughed with no real intention of completing an entire, coherent novel. 14 months later . . . I finished it!
I made plans to attend this writer's conference scheduled for April 2010. At this point, Ty was a couple months old. When Ty passed away, I decided that day that I quit. I wasn't going to do a lot of things that I had planned on doing; yet it only took a day before I realized I needed all those goals I had set up for myself, including work and trying to get this novel published.
So I attended this conference and enjoyed the experience of pitching the novel to an editor at Covenant Communications. He asked for the whole manuscript! (after he instructed that I needed to cut about, oh, 100 pages from my overly-wordy novel.) While waiting for my novel to be reviewed, the writer's group I was attending within my word were convinced that I needed to get my novel in the hands of the national market, not limited to the LDS publishing world, since it wasn't specifically an LDS book. So I pulled my manuscript with hopes of getting an agent in a larger, more dynamic audience.
A couple months later, I truly regretted that decision! Publishing was a lot harder than I imagined! I learned a ton over that summer about how to query, write a synopsis, contact literary agents and publishing houses, and . . . rejection, rejection, REJECTION! I should have taken my opening at Covenant when I had the chance -- not that they were necessarily going to say yes, but I had my foot in the door, and realized too late how hard that is! Nonetheless, it was a time-consuming hobby that got me through missing Ty and living in Las Vegas, away from him and the familiarity of home.
Since that time, I spent the next couple years submitting to a couple hundred literary agents off and on. I'd go at it for a couple months or so, accept the rejection for a time, then pick it up again just for fun. This year, I started to realize that at some point, I may just need to accept the common reality that first-time books often don't get published, and to move on.
Still, I had joined a writing group via Facebook, and an aspiring author mentioned a newer publishing company called Clean Teen Publishing that was accepting submissions. I said, "sure, why not. One last hurrah and I might call it good." Submission guidelines said they'd get back to me in 2-3 weeks; five weeks later, I hadn't heard anything. So I inquired if they had indeed received my submission. They had not!
So I resubmitted my first 15 pages and a synopsis. A week later, (and right around the time I received an offer from Walnut Springs to publish Ty's book), Clean Teen asked for the full manuscript! "How crazy would it be if both my first two books got picked up at the same time?" I asked myself, and my family; to which I felt a little overwhelmed by the idea and almost hoped nothing came of it!
A week after my full manuscript was submitted, the Chief Administrative Officer from Clean Teen requested my friendship on Facebook. Hmm. . . spy move? I wondered, but I accepted the friend request to see what would happened. The next day, I received my offer!
This time, Dan DID pick up when I called, my voice shaky with excitement when I said his name. "What's wrong? What's the matter?" he asked. I was laughing in disbelief as I shared the news. So crazy!!
It's been a whirlwind experience with them, and night-and-day compared to the communication I have with the LDS publishing company. Clean Teen is fast and furious with their communication, marketing, and friendly-nature. They are hilarious and so fun to work with, and all this has just been doing through email and Facebook! Walnut Springs communicated with me a ton for the first week and a half or so, but I haven't' heard much since. I have this nervous feeling that they will bail out, since I haven't even received the contract in the mail to officially sign on. I'll be a little devastated but what can you do?
Still, it's so nice to have my upcoming debut novel, which I believe is being changed from my temporary title of "Hidden Pines" to "The Echoes that Remain."
It's comin' fast!
1 comment:
This is so great!! I'm super excited for you! I remember you told me all about this book when you were visiting me and Brandon on a trip out to California. It's a good one! And I can hardly wait to read it in written form!
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