Maria Waves... I got the Call!

I was going to post about something completely different today, but in light of the fact that I sold yesterday, I can't think of anything better to blog about!

It's still so surreal I can hardly believe it. As a matter of fact, there's still a tiny part of me that doesn't believe it. But as the hours go by and I still haven't gotten a second call telling me it was all a dream, I think it's beginning to sink in.

Here's how it happened (pardon the back story):

5 1/2 years ago I put my husband on a plane to Israel for a 2 week business trip. As I was kissing him goodbye at the airport, he asked me what I was going to do for the next 2 weeks. (Typical man question considering that I work part time and we have 3 children). I responded, "I'm going to completely organize the house, clean all the closets, etc.". He nodded in response. "Great goal!"

Yeah.

Driving home on the highway back to our home in north Tallahassee, it suddenly hit me. How depressing. I was going to spend the next 2 weeks cleaning out closets? No. I'm going to write a book, damnit. I'd been talking about it for a couple of years now, but I'd never found the time to actually put my butt in a chair and do it. So I got home and started writing. I loved historical romance, so naturally, that's what I was going to write. That first book was called "His Perfect Wife". I finished it in about 8 months and then discovered Romance Writers of America. The nearest chapter was over 2 hours away, so I joined RWA Online. It was the best decision I ever made. Needless to say, 5 1/2 years later, those closets are still waiting to be tackled.

I found a critique group and started submitting my work and I signed up to go to NY for my first RWA National convention. I was on my way, baby. Then I got my first group crit. All I can say is it took me a bottle of wine and 2 hours of listening to Norah Jones to get to the point where I could actually look at it again.

I had no idea how badly I sucked until I was told (in a nice and encouraging way) by those first crit partners. Had I really used a thousand exclamation points in one chapter? Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. So I wiped away the tears and started that chapter again. My 2nd crit was much better. But I soon discovered that there were a lot of plot problems with the story and frankly, I was sick of it. I'd learned enough to know that sometimes some stories have to die. So "His Perfect Wife" was euthanized and sent off to Book Heaven in the sky.

That's when I started writing "The War Bride." This was a story I could really sink my teeth into. I had a hot hero, a strong headed heroine, exotic locales, spies... everything needed for a compelling historical romance. And my writing had gotten much better. I started entering contests and placing and winning. I started querying agents. I started a new book- this time a contemporary romantic comedy because, well, just because. Like my other 2 books, it just sort of came to me that it had to be written.

Then my good friend, Gina, told me about the American Title Contest. She knew I had written an historical and suggested I enter it. I blindly submitted my partial, having no idea what the contest was really about. When I got the letter from Dorchester saying they wanted my full, I was ecstatic. And then I got the email saying I'd finaled! The fact that Gina had also finaled was the cherry on top of the whipped cream.

To say this contest was a roller coaster of emotions wouldn't do it justice. Every round was excruciatingly painful. You either had to say goodbye to someone you'd come to care about, or face the fact you yourself were eliminated.Our little group of AT 2 sisters had become close and we were all rooting for each other.

Sometime shortly after the contest began, my cp, Mel, suggested that I query her agent, Deidre Knight. I had met Deidre a few times before and loved her as a person. She was so warm and friendly, the exact type of person I knew I would get along with. So I queried her with "The War Bride" and with a partial of my new contemporary "The Church of Bunco." She loved War Bride, but thought Church needed some work so she asked me to rethink my original concept.

This was the really hard part. Rethinking a book that you've already plotted out ( and seemed great in your mind). A few months after I queried her, she took me on as a client. We shopped War Bride, but it didn't sell. I can remember distinctly, this very funny and sad moment in Atlanta, where Deidre and I sat on this bench outside the hotel, both of us slightly tipsy, where she told me that she didn't think War Bride would sell. It wasn't sexy enough in today's very hot historical market. Unless, maybe, I could add in a bondage scene or something? I laughed until I cried. It seemed that War Bride was going to find its way up to Book Heaven too.

She told me to finish Church of Bunco. She was confident that it would be "the one". So I brushed myself off and came home from Atlanta and started revamping Church. By this time, Mel and I had added another crit partner -Louisa. Between Mel and Louisa, I had the sharpest, smartest cps in the business. It took me another year to finish Church. I kept scrapping it and revamping until I found the story. But once I found my core story it took off in my head. I think I finished the last 200 pages in less than 2 months.

I showed the story to Deidre, who then suggested a few revisions. I spent another month or so making those revisions and then the proposal went out. A couple of days before Thanksgiving. Ugh. Talk about holiday stress! But the response was very positive and within a week, about 11 editors had Bunco in their inbox.

Then of course, came the fast rejections. The most frustrating being something along the lines of : I love it, but it falls between the cracks of women's fiction and contemporary romance and I'm not sure where to place it. It went to acquisitions at one house, only to have it shot down for the same reason as above.

Then came Christmas and I knew that things would slow down. And they did.

I didn't hear anything else until last week, when I received 2 more rejections. This meant that the manuscript was now at 5 houses, instead of the original 11. I was depressed. But Deidre and my cps kept telling me that it only takes one editor to totally love it and totally get it. That's all we needed; 1 editor....

Okay, enough of the back story:

Fade in to yesterday afternoon. I'm sick. Really sick. Like I have the flu and feel like shit sick. So I'm sitting on my couch with my stack of Kleenex and bottle of NyQuil watching "An Officer and a Gentleman". It's almost to that awesome scene where Richard Gere searches Debra Winger out at the depressing little factory she works at, scoops her up in his arms and walks off with her into the sunset.. and my phone rings.

I look at the caller ID and it's Deidre's number. My heart begins to speed up. "Hey, what's up?" I ask. "You sound awful!" she says.
"I feel awful," I say.
And then she says the 11 little words that changed my life, "Well, I'm about to make you feel a whole lot better!"

At this point, I start to scream. My 16 year old, who was doing his calculus homework in his room, comes running out to make sure I'm okay. I'm better than okay. I'm fabulous, terrific, ecstatic, over-the-moon. Because I know that this can only mean one thing. I've sold!

Wendy McCurdy at Berkley wants to buy Church in a 2 book deal! Deidre tells me the specifics and tells me that the deal is good enough that we should pull the book from the other 4 houses. Do I agree? Hell, yes, I agree. Call Wendy back up before she changes her mind! I say.

After jumping and screaming a little bit more, I start calling the entire universe. Or at least, my part of it. Although I have to admit, I kept going back to the caller ID machine to make sure the call really did exist. That it wasn't just some NyQuil induced fantasy on my part.

As of now, it seems the fantasy is still real!