My Long, Strange Road to Becoming a Published Novelist
I’m honoured to be taking part in what is one of the most ingenious promotional ideas ever!
Novelist Mark Terence Chapman has started a blog chain! Myself, along with eight other authors, have each posted a part of his nine part story on how he became published.
If you’ve arrived here first, just follow the links back to the start to read the entire story from the beginning. Mark has been on quite the journey to achieve his dream and he’s an inspiration to every writer out there!
So now read on to read Part Eight of his nine part blog chain!
My long, strange road to becoming a published novelist (Part VIII)
(This entry is a continuation of one on author KS Augustin’s blog. Click here to return to Part VII.)
In early May 2007, a Romance novelist and I were commiserating about our respective inability to land an agent to represent our books. Later that day, I came across the url for a small Romance publisher, Shadowrose Publishing, and suggested that the other author try contacting them directly, instead of going through an agent. She agreed and submitted a manuscript.
Several days later, she emailed me to ask whether I knew that Shadowrose had just started an imprint for sci-fi and other genre fiction, called Shadowmere Publishing. I responded that I hadn’t, and thanked her for the information. I submitted my second novel (chronologically first in the series), Lichen or Not, to them and waited.
Three weeks later, the other author emailed me, all excited, and thanked me for pointing her to Shadowrose. She’d just received a contract by email and was elated. Naturally, I was thrilled for her. Then I thought about my own novel. I hoped I’d hear back from Shadowmere as quickly as she’d heard from Shadowrose (and with the same result).
Three days later, I received an email from the editor at Shadowmere, saying that she really enjoyed Lichen, and asking whether I had any other manuscripts to send her. I didn’t know whether that meant the first one wasn’t quite good enough and she hoped the second would be better, or that she did like the first one and might want to publish both, since they were part of a series. So I sent her Tesserene.
I was still nervous about Tesserene. It was my first novel, and while I knew the story was good (probably better than that of Lichen), I wasn’t as sure about the writing. If she didn’t like the writing in Lichen quite enough, she probably wouldn’t like Tesserene either.
I sat back to wait, figuring it would be days, if not weeks, before I heard back about Tesserene. As a result, I was surprised to see a response after only 26 minutes. I figured this had to be bad news. There was no way she could have read more than the first chapter or two of Tesserene.
I opened the email and was stunned to find a congratulatory note with two contracts attached! Wow. I was one happy puppy that day, I can tell you. Talk about a Red Letter Day!
I’ve dragged this tale out long enough (maybe way too long for some of you), but it’s almost done. Click here to read the final segment of the story, on my blog. (422 words)
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