Reply: December 31st, 2009

So it’s been five years.

Honestly? I’m kind of proud. No, I’m really proud.

This time four years ago I’d finally, for the first time, completed an ms that I was pleased enough with to actually try to query. I decided to hold off until the New Year of course, but I was incredibly proud, incredibly excited, and yes just a little nervous. At that time, though I’d read tons of agent blogs and started researching at the Absolute Write Forums, I still didn’t really have a concept of how difficult the process would be. I guess my problem was that I was paying too much attention to those ‘one in a million’ stories – stories where people who’ve never written a word in their lives suddenly dream up a bestseller, write it in a month, sell it in a week and get millions for it. You know them. There are tons more like them.

I knew what the odds were, but I just wanted to believe that I might be one of those ‘special cases’. Of course, I wasn’t. It was a long and hard road to getting an agent, and an even harder, longer road getting a publisher. A few rewrites, tons of rejections, crushing self-doubt…I was so close to quitting. I started wondering about completely changing my style to fit with the current trends; you know, start up a soulless wip and hope I catch the next bandwagon. So the one thing I can say I’m super proud of is that in the five years I’ve been writing and trying to get my name out there, I never did this. Never phoned it in, never stopped believing. I kept going, kept developing my craft until I finally published my first book – and now even more important than the fact that I was able to get published, I’m also proud knowing that I’ve really developed as a writer. Of course, it sucks beyond all recognition that my old publisher, Strange Chemistry, went under. In a way, publishing is more ruthless these days and my book (as well as the books of the other SC authors) suffered the consequences. But I learned from it. Grew from it. I want to continue that growth in 2015.

So let’s raise a glass to those five years and hope 2015 comes with much awesomeness, success, and general bad-assery all around!