My journey to being a published author.

For the first time since starting my blog, I want to jump into my author mode. Today is April 13, 2010 which means I have 1 month and 1 day (31 days) until the release of my very first book. It's titled A LESSON IN LOVE and it is being published by L&L Dreamspell, a small publishing house out of Texas.

I have always loved reading. When my sister and I were young, my mother would read a chapter a night of books such as The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and many others. I was the type of child too impatient to wait until the next night to hear what would happen next. I would take the books and read ahead to the point where my sister would never get to hear the end of the stories because I was already on to something else. (Yes, she blames me that she hates to read even now).

When I was thirteen, I discovered romance books. I still remember the first one I ever read: A Stormy Affair by Margaret Mayo. I was hooked.

I'm not sure when I started writing, but I remember in a high school English class, my teacher handed me one of my creative writing assignments and told me she wasn't going to correct it because she felt I would get more if I learned to edit it myself. While my assignments were to be around 3 pages, I wrote 6, 10, or even 20 pages per week.

At one point, I thought I wanted to write children's books, but that wasn't what I was reading, and I found myself leaning more towards love, romance, and happy ever afters. I put the children's book aside and wrote what made me happy. I started many stories but none were completed. When I was in my twenties, I wrote a poem called The Success Theorum, that was published in an anthology. I got to say that I was published before the age of 30. But I still wanted to finish a novel.

When I had my son, I picked up my pen, grabbed a notebook, and started writing and writing. The pad of paper went with me everywhere. Within 6 months my first draft was finished. Then I typed it and edited for the first time. Then I joined RWA and the NH chapter. WHOA! Now it was time to learn about the true ins and outs of writing and the publishing world.

When I joined NHRWA, they were just about to have their 1st Editor Retreat and since my book was "done" I jumped right in and decided to pitch to an editor. I knew nothing at the time about how to pitch or even how to classify my book. I knew it was a romance, but I didn't know if it was geared toward category or single title. I didn't know who Kate Duffy was or her reputation of telling it exactly how she saw it. Yet I leaped.

Pitching my book, which had seen no form of editing or critiquing at that point, to Kate Duffy, was an eye opener. She didn't care for the book, and with all the point of view changes I can certainly understand why, but she said something to me that made me confident that I would succeed. She told me "With a little education and work, I could be a star in the industry."

So I continued. That first book was put under my bed for a while and I started something else that didn't seem to work at all for me, but that first story kept calling out to me. So eventually it was pulled out, dusted off, and the edits began.

I had rejections, but I also started getting requests for the first three chapters, requests for the full. Requests for more changes. Then L&L Dreamspell www.lldreamspell requested my full. The difference with them is they saw the potential of the story and took the time to guide me in how I needed to edit my manuscript to get it published.

With the help of author Denise Robbins www.deniserobbins.com I began to understand how to make the necessary changes and finally I had a contract in hand.

Thirty one days to go until I hold the fruits of my labor in my hand. Thrilling. Exciting. Unbelieveable at times. The countdown begins.