Every author has their call story – about how the stars aligned for them after all the months of hard work and revisions and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and how an agent or editor finally called to express interest, and voila. Book deal. “Simple” as that.
Actually, it’s never simple, and it’s never the same for any two people. Even so, my call story’s a little unusual. For one thing, there were three calls involved, and for another thing, I made one of the calls myself.
I’ll try to keep this short, even though it’s a story that wants to be long. My call story began when I entered the Northwest Houston RWA’s Lone Star writing contest in spring 2009. I entered the first few chapters of my first novel, THE VISCOUNT’S DILEMMA, in the Historical category.
And then my house flooded – TWICE – and I forgot about the contest. I stopped querying, I stopped writing, I stopped doing anything except dealing with contractors and oh yeah working and oh maybe even sleeping but not much because there was always something else that needed to be fixed.
That went on for about five months.
At the end of that five months, things were reasonably normal again, and I missed writing SO much by then. I opened up my TVD files and looked everything over. I had fresh eyes for the work by this point, and I started tweaking and fixing and clipping and expanding and having a grand old time.
A couple weeks later, the Lone Star contest coordinator told me that I’d made the contest final. And shortly after that, the judging editor emailed me to ask for the full. You don’t say? Yep, she had my shiny newly edited MS in her inbox before the day was out.
And less than three weeks later, she called to make me an offer for it. So that was the first call in my call, and I actually missed it because I was at work. Crud! But she left a message. I know I didn’t imagine it, because I made other people listen to it and tell me it was real. And I did get back to the editor the next day, and she promised it was real.
WOW. Ok. So. I called a couple of fantastic agents that I would have loved to work with, to tell them I had an offer on the table. If I had thought about this more, I would have been terrified and would have chickened out, because calling an agent is usually a major no-no. But I had read on publishing blogs that it actually is ok to call an agent when you have a deal on the table.
So, the second call in my call story was made by me.
Now, this all happened to be ONE DAY before I left the state on a very toddler-intensive family road trip. For a week. Driving. A day’s drive each way.
I was a little frazzled. I was supposed to be making my lists and checking them twice and getting packed. I ran up and down the stairs probably eighty times that day, leaving things in the wrong room, forgetting what I was doing, checking email every few minutes to see if I’d heard from anyone.
I was hoping for email replies (and I did get them, which was delightful). I never expected a call. But Paige Wheeler called me back. So that was the third call in my call story.
I had, of course, had HAD to call Paige Wheeler. I loff what she does with historical romance. Paige was the first agent that I ever queried with TVD, when I was a very excited, very new author and the book was in a fetal form that should not have been queried to any agent, or even shown to my mom. Paige forgave that trespass and offered to look not only at TVD but also at the next project I was working on.
And then I went off on my trek through rural America, where Internet access was limited, and as it turned out, so was cell phone coverage.
That peaceful family visit turned into a nerve-wracking, nail-biting, defenseless-relative-annoying trip. I couldn’t relax. I was perhaps a wee bit distracted. I checked for news every chance I got.
And I did get some. As I stood outside to talk on my cheapo cell, equidistant between my relative’s house and detached garage to avoid interference between the tin roofs and the reluctant cell signal, the neighbor’s terrier ran yappy circles around my legs. And Paige agreed to represent my work. It was a very surreal conversation. After I shook off the excited dog and went back inside, I could hardly believe it. I was half a country away from my writing.
But hooooly crap did I believe it soon after, because Paige went to work right away. She has a Time Turner, I think. It is amazing what she is able to get done.
But this was late 2009, and a lot was changing in the publishing industry. Mention the phrase “agency model” around an agent who has been negotiating e-book contract clauses, and you might just get yourself beaten by a Blackberry. Simply put, publishing contracts got complicated in some unprecedented ways, and everything slowed down while editors and agents negotiated all those unprecedented things.
Which is why it’s now the middle of 2010 when I’m announcing my sale. But voila again. The deal is done, the contract is signed, and all the calls are completed, at least for now. THE VISCOUNT’S DILEMMA has grown up from that fetal manuscript into my much-loved firstborn child (only figuratively speaking), and I’m proud of it. I’m so grateful to everyone who gave it a chance, from contest to read to sale. And in October 2011, it will be unleashed on the world!
Ok, that was really not a short version of the story. Sorry about that.