It Only Takes Once...

By Kirsten Scott

As of Thursday, October 17th, there are now officially two days that completely, and unexpectedly, changed my life.

The first came on January 1, 2000. My husband and I were staying at a condo in Northern Washington with our dear friends the Seyfarths (yes, that's Bandita Susan and husband), celebrating the new millenium. I was in the middle of my third year of law school, and had lately been bitten by that hormonal bug many of you women may recognize. This particular bug called out to me at odd moments of the day, "Procreate! Go Forth and Multiply!"

Now, having a baby wasn't really in the plan for my husband and I. First, I was going to graduate from law school. Then, I was going to study like mad and take the Bar exam. Then we were flying to New Zealand for a vacation before I started work at The Firm. Sometime after I had paid off some portion of my enormous student loan, we would think about babies.

But I've never been particularly patient (understatement of the year) person and there was one time..ONE TIME I TELL YOU...that I threw caution to the wind.

And it only took once.

We found out on New Years Day. Awestruck at what a difference one day can make, we changed all our plans. I put off starting work at The Firm, put the student loans on the 30 year plan, and New Zealand became a distant dream. We had a beautiful baby boy about two weeks after I took the Bar. Just like that, life changed.

So it happened again, on October 17th, 2007. I was at work, reading email during an endlessly boring meeting. Fabulous news! my agent wrote. Call right away!

I slipped out of the meeting and made the call, heart pounding. My agent had sent out my young adult manuscript a few weeks before, and I'd steeled myself for a long, long wait. What could "fantastic news" possibly mean?

It was more than I had ever imagined. An offer for a two-book deal for my young adult urban fantasy from Hyperion Books for Children, my dream publisher.

Being at work, I couldn't whoop and holler like I wanted, had to stifle the tears and pretend to be normal--normal, other than feeling like the room was spinning and I couldn't breathe quite right. I nearly passed out right in the hall, and barely managed to gasp, "I'll take it!"

I called my husband and he did the hollering for me, along with a little crying. Then I called Bandita Susan, who hollered some more and generally satisfied the rest of my need to make noise and dance around hysterically. I owe so much to Susan, and it was unbelievably satisfying to share my joy with her, and know she understood what it meant better than anyone.

What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four hours later, my husband and I were talking options--quit the day job? Work until I (please please) get another contract? Pay off the student loans? Can you believe we're even talking about this? Did it really happen?

What a wild ride. I've made virtually no decisions since then, just wandered around, awestruck once again at the difference a day makes.

So what about you? Any unexpected blessings change your life? Did it only take once for you, too? Did you guess I was hiding a call story in this post right from the start? :-)

The Call ... Finally!!!

By Kate
Will it ever ring?

Will they ever call?

They never call. Sigh.

I think I've been waiting for "The Call" since ... well, probably since I had a phone that looks like this one.

Fifty years? Okay, maybe not that long. Maybe only ten or twenty years.

But the waiting is over, my friends.

I GOT THE CALL!!!

And oh, it was a sweet moment. And at the risk of sounding really silly--like that's ever stopped me!--I've got to tell you, everything changed in that single moment when my agents told me that a senior editor at a top publishing company had enough confidence in my writing that she was willing to buy three--THREE!--as-yet unwritten manuscripts -- from ME!

In that moment, the world changed, I changed, everything changed.

I know it shouldn't be that way, should it? A word from one person and suddenly you're more important or special or different than you were a minute ago? Validation shouldn't have to come from outside. I should have confidence in my own work. And I do. Really. But come on!

It’s like magic! When "The Call" comes, everything changes and all the years of hard work and rejections and hitting your head against the wall and stumbling and picking yourself up and starting over again ... all that background story suddenly hits an incredible turning point and then it spins and twists and explodes in an amazing climax. And whew, everything is different. And it's fantastic!

And then I hang up the phone and go back to the day job.

So sad!!

But someday soon …

Meanwhile, here’s a little history of what brought on the sale. I was sooo tired of hearing that my current mystery didn’t have a hook (My agent said “your voice and humor is your hook” – isn't that sweet! But, uh, no sale.). So I pushed myself to write a cozy mystery proposal with a HOOK. You might say I wrote it for revenge. And hey, it worked! I sold the first three books of a new mystery series to NAL. Woohoo!!

Here’s the announcement from Publishers Marketplace…

Kate Carlisle's HOMICIDE IN HARDCOVER: A Bibliophile Mystery, a cursed copy of Goethe's Faust leads a rare book restorer into a murder investigation that only she can solve -- with the help of clues she uncovers in a valuable first edition, and three other books in the series, to Kristen Weber at NAL, by Kelly Harms and Christina Hogrebe at Jane Rotrosen Agency (world English).

Homicide in Hardcover. Isn't that cool? It's really real! I’m still over the moon but starting to get used to the feeling ...

And my fondest wish is that every one of my Bandita sisters experience that moment when everything changes. I can't wait to cheer you on!!!

Cheers!

How I Met My Editor -- The Latest "Call" Story

by Aunty Cindy

July 2006 Atlanta, Georgia -- RWA National Conference

My "roomie" and writing buddy, Willie Ferguson and I leave our room on the 20th floor of the hotel to go to the continental breakfast being served before the start of the workshops. (Amazingly Aunty is up and dressed at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m.)

The elevator door opens and we get in with two other people, a woman and a man. The man asks the woman what she writes and she tells him she's not a writer, but an editor. Then she looks over at Willie and me and seeing the Golden Heart ribbon on my name badge, she says, "Oh, you're a Golden Heart Finalist! My name is Deb Werksman and I'm an editor at Sourcebooks. I'd really love to read your manuscript." I tell her sure, I'll be happy to send it to her and she gives me her business card.

Once we get off the elevator and go our separate ways, Willie gasps, "I can't believe how cool and calm you were!" I am staring at the card yawning, and she realizes I'm still half-asleep.

However, I DO send the editor the full manuscript of my GH finalist when I get home from the conference.

Fast forward six months...

At the urging of my fellow Bandita and CP, Jo-Mama, I send an email to the editor as a friendly little request on the status of my manuscript and while I'm at it, I throw in a query for my current WIP. A month later, I get a rejection of the "not quite right for me" variety and figure that is the last I will hear.

Two months later...

I receive an email from the editor saying she would like to read more of the WIP. I am surprised, but also in the midst of doing a mass query of agents and sending out a requested full of my GH manuscript. I take my sweet time until Jo-Mama kicks my arse and I send the partial a month after the request.

Friday, July 27th

Still somewhat in a funk because I didn't get to go to Dallas with my Bandita buddies, I return home from my usual Friday lunch "date" with 3 friends, to be greeted by the DH. Looking unusually frazzled, he clutches a piece of paper with his semi-legible scribbles all over one side of it. He says, "Deb Werksman called here on her way home from work. She wants you to send the entire manuscript of Death In The Fens!" As I stare dumbfounded at the paper (an editor has never called me before), he adds, "She said you would know what to do because you already sent her the first four chapters."

I hug him and praise him profusely for doing a "good job" (men need this kind of positive reinforcement!), and then spend the next few days in a frenzy trying to polish up the last few chapters. Finally, on August 2nd, afraid to wait any longer, I dash off a cover email, attach the whole file and hit "send."

Now the waiting starts. I query a few more agents and two more editors. I fumble around with ideas for my next project and do some research, all the while telling myself, "The first editor to see a manuscript NEVER buys it!" Meanwhile, I continue collecting rejections.

Friday, September 14th -- a day that will henceforth surpass all others for sheer joy!

8:45 a.m. The phone rings and wakes me up. A woman's voice asks for Cindy and I groggily identify myself. Then she says, "This is Deb Werksman from Sourcebooks..."
For one nano-second my heart stops while my mind races. She would NOT call me to REJECT the manuscript...
"...I'm calling because we want to publish Death In The Fens..."

I leap out of bed! Scream! Cry! Somewhere along the line, I actually calm down enough to have a semi-coherent conversation with her -- MY EDITOR!
Fifteen minutes, or a lifetime or so later, I tell her that I may have to call her back on Monday just to be sure all this REALLY HAPPENED! She laughs and tells me to go ahead.

That morning in Atlanta, I never dreamed that getting into the elevator would eventually change my life!

What about you? Did a seemingly random event turn out to be life changing? Aunty would love to hear about it!

A writer's dream come true

By Trish Milburn

Yesterday morning at around 10:20, while sleeping because I was suffering from a sinus infection and a fever, I got The Call. My agent called to tell me I'd sold my first two books, young adult titles, to Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin. How did this fabulous event come about? Here's the skinny.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away...

Okay, so it was really the 1990s, and I was in Kentucky, but whatever. I began writing my first romance manuscript when I was in college at good ol' Murray State University in Western Kentucky. It wasn't an everyday kind of endeavor at that point because, well, I had a lot of studying to do and typically held two jobs while I was at it. I continued to piddle after I graduated in 1993 and started my first job as a newspaper reporter while the hubby did the grad school thing. The piddling continued when we moved to Tennessee in 1995 and I began working in the marketing department of an insurance company.

But in 1996, my local RWA chapter formed,I became a member of RWA, and I started learning more about the business and craft of writing. I continued to write when I left the insurance company and went back to journalism as a writer and editor at a magazine. I left that job 2 1/2 years ago to freelance write and edit, believing I was on the verge of sale (one of those that fell through.) Now, 11 years after beginning to submit to publishing houses, I finally have sold my first two books. Not the first two I wrote. Those are safely tucked away in the deep recesses of my computer and on floppy disks (yep, floppy disks). I've written 18 full manuscripts since beginning to submit to editors, and there have definitely been days when I got rejections or felt I was "thisclose" to selling only to have it fall through that the thought of just chucking it all occurred to me. I'm so glad I didn't. I will forevermore be the queen of preaching perseverance to other writers. After a point, if you are getting good critiques and finaling in or winning contests, you've got the grasp on craft you need to be published. You just have to find the right editor at the right time with the right project while continually studying the business side of the industry and endeavoring to always push your writing to the next level.

I'm, of course, not the only writer who has taken the long and winding road to getting published. My good friend Merrillee Whren, who writes for Silhouette Love Inspired, wrote for 15 years before getting published. Super YA and paranormal author Stephanie Rowe, like me, wrote 18 manuscripts before selling, and now she's a multi RITA finalist. I owe Stephanie a lot because she encouraged me to write young adult books, and that's what got me my agent and, three years later, my first sale. She also nearly hyperventilated on the phone when I called to tell her and sent me these beautiful flowers today.



I have so many friends who are in the boat I was in two days ago -- they're super talented, they've finaled in and won lots of contests, and they've completed lots of books. I'll do whatever I can to help them climb from that boat into this new boat. I'm hoping they get that wonderful, unbelievable call very soon.