Happy New Year!

“Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.” ~Leo Buscaglia


A brand new year…exciting! And just to start it off really well, 2 great things happened to me in the final days of 2006:
#1. I got to meet, in person, one of my virtual writing friends, Marianne






It’s a funny thing, seeing/speaking/sitting down and having coffee with someone you’ve come to know online over the years. We met way back at WVU, and though we’ve both jumped to a couple of different writing groups along the way, we both write romance and, interestingly enough, are both at about the same point in our journey to publication, so we have a lot in common. Plus we’re both witty and charming (not to mention good-looking, right?) ha ha…

But it was really nice to talk to someone else who writes. To talk about character, and conflict, and the struggles of breaking into the market. To bemoan contest judges who give a 100 and a 62 to the same entry. To vent about trying to find the time to write and be a wife/mother/homemaker/professional too. That’s why writing groups are so great, right?

But there is definitely something nice about doing it in person, too. To think of yourself as a writer first. To admit, out loud, that yes, you do hope to publish in print someday. Once you’ve said it, it’s somehow more real. More scary. And more possible.


#2. My manuscript One Night in Boston was accepted by Samhain Publishing!!!!!!


I love this novel; I really do. It was my second attempt at writing a “24 hour novel” - a romance that takes place over the course of a single day and night. I thought the idea was interesting, thought it hadn’t been done before, and so plunged in…and found it a lot harder to manage that I first imagined.

But thanks to my wonderful friends at WVU, along with some painful but ultimately helpful feedback from agents like Susan Ginsburg (and her assistant Emily Saladino) at Writers House, I finished it.

Then no one wanted it. Agents liked the idea but not the story itself, apparently. I decided to try e-press. And lo and behold, I come back from vacation to find an email from Samhain’s editor saying they love it.

I like a couple of things, especially, about this e-publisher: first, it was started up by a former editor of Ellora’s Cave, so she knows the business and the genre; second, the novels they publish go to print after the first 2-3 months of release; third, what research I’ve done seems to indicate that their authors are really happy with them; and fourth, (I’ll admit it), they offer a modest advance of $100. And it’s not so much about the $$ as the fact that they believe you’ll sell enough to cover that, which is a nice vote of confidence in your work.

So today I’m actually celebrating by going shopping for myself, something that doesn’t happen too often. Then it’s back to the computer, for a few more precious hours of writing before school starts up again tomorrow.

What are your plans for this first day of a brand new year?