The Book of the Month Club
At the end of 2012, I was sitting around, feeling
sorry for myself. I’ve been working on a writing career since I first moved to
Utah in 1988, and although I’ve had some small successes, published two books
with niche presses and won several writing awards, the all-elusive benchmarks
of having an agent and signing with a big-name publisher had never come to be.
Oh sure, I’d pitched to agents, who requested both
partial and full manuscripts, then I never heard from them again. Not even a-thanks-but-no-thanks
email, even after I sent them a follow-up. I guess ignoring the writer is the
newest trend in giving a rejection. Maybe it’s easier on the agent, or at least
less time consuming.
Meanwhile, as an author, and like many others I
know, we all sit at home, thinking surely a phone call, a letter, or an email will
come sometime soon saying “YES, I’d love to represent you.” But that moment
never came.
The editors I met with were a little better, albeit
not much. About half of them had the courtesy to respond, even though about
half of those were form letters, often poorly photocopied, but a response at
least, even if the answer was “No, thank you.”
“I love your writing, but it’s just not right for my
list.”
“We’ve decided to pass.”
“Good luck finding a house for your work.”
Right.
Good luck with that. If my book isn’t the next-big-thing then I can forget
about finding a traditional publisher.
I don’t write about vampires, dystopian America, or
erotica so that throws out the possibility of catching the current wave, which
really isn’t current at all since those topics have all been covered and
covered again in the last few years.
So what is the next new wave? What should I be
writing and submitting?
“We’ll know it when we see it.”
Right again. Finding that one on my own is more
difficult than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Stand about 500
feet away and throw the dart, hoping you pop the right balloon to win the
prize. Oh, and you have to do it before anyone else does, yet be so much like
everyone else’s story that the publishers know what to do with it, how to
market, where to shove it into a category, and it had better be hot, hot, hot
when it comes to sales or you’re right back where you started from.
That’s when I started to look at my writing realistically.
I love to write. I know how to tell a good story. Readers
have enjoyed my work enough that the reviews have been good and I’ve won awards
from a variety of writing contests. But I’m not getting any younger, and the
books I’ve written have been rejected by every agent or editor who has
requested them, and everyone else I’ve simply queried. There came a point when
I told my critique group—most of you know them and the powerhouse bunch of
published authors they are—that I didn’t think I could do this anymore. I was
tired of the rejection, tired of spending every evening, weekend or summer
vacation writing away and never seeing any acceptance letters as a result.
I was done with writing.
So I came home and took some time off. It was hard.
My characters kept calling out to me, begging for their stories to be finished.
Those that were already done, complained about how tired they were of sitting
on my computer hard drive, constantly being backed up to make sure they didn’t
one day disappear altogether. They wanted to be read by people who would love
them.
And that’s all I wanted for them as well. I didn’t
need a huge contract with a large advance. Of course that would be nice, but I
didn’t need it, and if the truth be known, I wasn’t sure I ever even really
wanted that. A contract came with its own set of obligations—new books, topics sometimes
chosen at the discretion of the editor and publisher, rather than the
characters who spoke to me, written on a schedule that allowed a full year to
pass from one publication to the next, and promotion that possibly meant travel
and time on the road that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with physically, as well
as finding a way to travel when I still have a son at home who needs a parent.
What I wanted was to write the books I wanted, at
the speed I wanted to write them, to have the way to publish them, and to find
the right audience who wanted to read them. I don’t have a single platform—I have
many. I write novels for middle grade, young adult and adult audiences. I write
for LDS readers, and non-LDS readers. I write non-fiction for both groups as
well, and the range of topics is broad—memoir, education, and history so far,
with lots of other ideas swirling around in my head.
The email messages started coming in from the
members of my group: “You can’t quit.”
And the characters in my head told me they were
right.
So in December, I made a decision. If publishers
didn’t want to buy my books, then I’d need to move on without them. I had readers
who were tired of waiting and I was too.
That’s where my 2013 goal came in. I would publish a
book-a-month, even if I had to do it on Kindle. I made a list of all the books I had already written
that were sitting on my hard drive, waiting for a home. I added the manuscripts
that were nearly done as well, and found, that even with not yet counting the
two manuscripts I had out waiting for a response from traditional publishers,
that I had enough books close enough to completion to meet my goal. (Since
then, both of those books have been formally rejected, so they are now a part
of my master list of books that will be lining up on Amazon, ready for an
instant download to the readers who want them.)
In January, my goal started to become a reality. Leona & Me, Helen Marie was the
first entry out of the gate, just like it was the first novel I ever wrote.
Based on the stories my mother told me about her childhood, growing up in
southern Indiana, this middle grade novel is near and dear to my heart. It was
written shortly after my mother passed away and I am thrilled that the two
beautiful girls on the front cover are actually my mom, Helen Marie, and my
aunt, Leona Mae.
February was highlighted by the release of A Note Worth Taking, adorned with a new
cover that placed it into the Small Town U.S.A. series. Although some readers
have tried to read themselves into this novel, when it comes right down to it,
it’s a story I made up in my mind. Sure, some of the events are based on truth,
but the conflict and resolution, and the characters who play key roles are
purely fiction. I’ve taught school for over 30 years, and I’m here to tell you,
when it comes to girl drama, there is nothing new under the sun, so you could
change the names a million times and people would still wonder, “Is this about
ME?”
The digital version of When Hearts Conjoin was available starting in March. As the
credited ghostwriter of this family drama/memoir, I was pleased to be the recipient
of Utah’s Best of State medal for Non-Fiction Literary Arts after its original publication,
and I was thrilled to work with New York Times Best-selling author Richard Paul
Evans throughout the entire publication stage that brought the book to you.
I celebrated my birthday with the release of Tides Across the Sea, a YA historical
with a hint of romance. This book is set to be the first in a series called The Explorers, with novels about Eric
the Red and Leif the Lucky already outlined on my computer, waiting their turn
at draft. Tides saw its performance
debut at Payson Jr. High when I read it to a class of 7th graders,
one of whom who decided to act the entire thing out as I read to the group.
Currently I’m doing a final read through and proof of
Just Like Elizabeth Taylor, which
will be my May release. This YA novel was the winner of the Utah Arts Council
Original Writing Competition for Juvenile Fiction, as well as The League of
Utah Writers Juvenile Novel of the Year. Although the topic is darker than most
of my books, it is filled with hope, friendship, and a silver-lining at the
end.
That brings us to the date of this blog post, but
the list won’t stop there.
Not all of my releases will be fiction, although
those are coming too. Men of Destiny:
Abraham Lincoln and the Prophet Joseph Smith; Living in an Osmond World; Been
There, Done That, Bought the T-Shirt; and volume 2 of Books, Books, and More Books: A Parent and Teacher’s Guide to
Adolescent Literature are all in the running for the summer release spots. Temporary Bridesmaid, Carny, and Ebenezer are on my summer vacation agenda for revision or
completion.
And who knows what else I might write or resurrect between
now and the end of the year.
Nothing is set in stone as to which one comes next,
so if you have a preference shout it out so I can see what I can do to make your
request available soon.
In the meantime, thanks for reading, and a HUGE
thank you to those of you who also take the time to leave reviews at Amazon and
GoodReads. Word-of-mouth is the best advertizing when it comes to discovering and
sharing books. As a former English teacher and now school librarian, I’ve seen
kids pick up books and read them just because someone they respected told them
it was good. I hope that some of my readers will feel inclined to do the same
thing, and whenever possible, I’ll return the favor for you.
Leave a response on the blog, send me a tweet, or a
message on my Facebook wall, and I’d be happy to recommend a book to you.
