My winding, twisty path to publication

Proof there are many (convoluted) ways to get where you've always wanted to be

I did not go about becoming a writer the traditional way.

When I say “traditional”, I mean the way I thought it would go when I decided to try and write a book: Write a manuscript, find an agent, get a book deal, get your book published.

It sounds so nice and simple and packaged up perfectly.

And it’s how I always envisioned my journey. In fact, I was one of those kids who always wanted to be a writer from a very young age. I just didn’t think it was realistic to be an author as my job. So I took a detour and became a copywriter in advertising, wrote mom blogs when I had my kids, became an editor of an online magazine/parent website, and then found my way back to story.

What I did first

When I was 39, I decided I’d like to be published by the time I was 40, so I started writing my first manuscript.

(I will now pause for laughter.)

I was so naive, I had no idea how long anything took. Not just in the publishing industry, but even the process of writing a book, finding readers, editing, revising, finding more readers and revising some more.

Unaware of what was ahead of me, I wrote my first manuscript, found a critique partner through a free service I had googled, and sent her my work. For several months, we sent our chapters back and forth to one another, and I made revisions based on her feedback.

At the same time, I started searching for and devouring anything and everything I could find on how to get published. I read articles from authors on what to do once your book was written, took a course on how to query an agent, listened to podcasts on writing, and tried to soak up as much knowledge as I could.

This pointed me in the direction of hiring a professional freelance editor to help me with my manuscript. Here’s a line from the first email I sent her:

I'm an unagented, unpublished total newbie who has written my first book. I've had a beta reader read and critique it for me and I've worked on a lot of edits. I'd love to start querying, but I actually can't tell if I'm ready.

I was not ready.

However, after working with the editor, I did some more extensive, extensive work on the manuscript and eventually decided to query.

I sent 12 queries in three waves. Like this:

• 4 queries sent initially - received some pretty quick rejections (this was back in early 2019)

• 5 queries sent 3 months later

• 3 queries sent 2 months later

From those 12 queries, I had only one partial request and one full request. At the time, I had no idea that this was actually decent. But, after receiving rejections on those requests, there was something within me telling me to set it aside.

So I did. I had already moved on to my next idea and manuscript.

The second manuscript

While working on my next manuscript, I continued to read, listen, take classes, enter contests, and completely absorb myself in the world of publishing so I could try and learn more and do better.

I read craft books on how to plot properly. I joined a Twitter chat group of fellow newer writers to talk to and learn from. I worked on pacing and tone and showing versus telling. I took online courses on story structure and writing emotion and interiority. I bought courses from Judy Blume and Margaret Atwood and Jojo Moyes and Lee Child. I invested a lot of money from my day job into the art of writing, knowing that I wouldn’t be getting a return on my investment anytime soon. But I did it because I loved writing and learning about writing.

By now it was late 2019. I had finished the book and went through rounds and rounds of readers and revisions again, and by early 2020, I started querying.

Here are the stats:

• 70 queries sent

• 11 full requests, 4 partial requests

• 11 rejections on those full requests

Those rejections stung extra stingy because I felt like I was so close. 11 requests felt huge to me.

Alas, as is my pattern, I had already moved on to my next manuscript.

The third manuscript

Now it was 2020. I set aside my second manuscript and went through all the same motions again with my third: Draft, draft, draft. Revise, revise, revise.

This time around, I actually think I had too many beta readers. I got lost in feedback and I wrote and rewrote the manuscript many, many times.

After working on it for a year, I queried it for almost another full year in 2021 and it looked like this:

• 76 queries sent to agents + 4 small presses taking unsolicited submissions (I didn’t realize you weren’t supposed to query both agents and editors at the same time)

• 19 full requests, 5 partials, 1 R&R + 4 full requests from editors at small presses = a total of 23 full requests

One of those full requests came from an editor at a small, newly established Canadian press called Rising Action Publishing. And then I got the email.

They wanted my book.

That third manuscript of mine eventually became my debut novel, Burlington.

I received the offer in November of 2021, three years and three manuscripts after I decided to take novel-writing seriously. It wasn’t published for another two years, in August of 2023, five years after I first sat down and tapped away at my laptop.

After the book deal

This is where my path gets extra twisty.

Now it’s the start of 2022. I have a book deal, but no agent. I also have two shelved manuscripts, and another manuscript I had started writing while querying Burlington.

I shared the second manuscript I had written and shelved with my editor at Rising Action. She was nice, but wasn’t interested in it and didn’t offer me a deal.

So, I decided to keep working on my new manuscript with the potential of showing it to my editor, or trying to query it because I still thought that having an agent was still the ultimate goal for me. I wanted a partner in my career to help me reach all the goals I had set for myself.

While I was working on it, and working on edits for Burlington, I heard about a new digital-first publisher starting up in the UK called Storm. The owner was a publishing professional from the industry who was successful and had a really smart business model. They also accepted un-agented manuscripts.

My new one wasn’t ready, but I had that second one sitting around in a drawer. I had nothing to lose.

So I sent them the manuscript.

A short while later, I received an offer from Storm to publish it.

Plot twist: They want to publish quickly… and they want another book, too

Now it’s late 2022. I have two book deals with two different publishers and two manuscripts fully written and polished (only, little did I know how much editing was involved AFTER the deal as well!)

Burlington had a pub date of August 2023 and my new publisher, Storm Publishing, wanted to publish the manuscript I sent them in October of 2023.

I agreed to the short timeline, not knowing how much work went into editing.

That second manuscript with Storm is what became my second book, Last Summer at the Lake House. And when Storm offered me a deal on it, they also asked if I could follow it up with another book. It was their model to follow with a second novel shortly after the first.

By this time, I had finished the manuscript I was working on after Burlington, so I sent it to Storm as a potential second book. Their feedback was great, and they liked, but they didn’t feel it was quite the right type of follow-up to Last Summer.

So, I set it aside and did what I was used to doing by now: I started yet another manuscript.

That one was written fairly quickly, but I had the help of my editor at Storm to work with along the way.

I wrote and revised what was to become The Summerville Sisters in 2022/2023 and it came out in January of 2024.

Phew.

Still no agent… until…

In late 2023, after two of my three books were out and my third was done on my end, I had yet again started another draft of a manuscript, only because I find this to be the best way to take my mind off of the waiting phase.

If I wasn’t waiting on queries, I was waiting to hear back from my editor, then waiting to see how my book was received, then waiting to see if one day I’d wake up and find something wild and amazing had happened overnight. (It didn’t.)

And so I wrote.

I decided, on a whim, to post about it on Instagram. Here’s what I wrote:

And here’s the moment I knew my path was possibly going to change again:

I had met Carolyn back in 2019 at a writer conference where I signed up to pitch my manuscript to her. I pitched her my second manuscript (the one that became Last Summer at the Lake House). Carolyn eventually passed, but she was kind and thoughtful and mentioned it had been close, and to please send her my next.

After that, we followed one another on Instagram, and I guess she saw what I was up to. Once I saw the comment from her, and once I calmed the heck down, I sent her an email. We went back and forth for quite a while trying to find a time to meet, but eventually I ended up with Carolyn Forde as my agent.

But, because my path is not straight forward, and because it took several months of back and forth before signing with Carolyn, I had been in contact with my editor at Storm about what I was working on next. I can’t recall the exact timeline, since there was a lot of waiting and back and forth, but at some point, I sent my work in progress to my editor and after it was done, received an offer from Storm.

The offer for the manuscript came right around the same time as the official offer from Carolyn came through.

So, I signed with Carolyn, then we decided to sign the deal with Storm, and the rest is history.

In summation

This was a very long way of saying that if you find yourself worried or bummed that your path hasn’t yet taken you where you want it to go, my advice is to keep working at it.

I wanted to go the route of: write, get an agent, get published with a big publisher. But instead, I went the route of: write, get a book deal with a small publisher, get a two-book deal with another small publisher, get an agent, get another book deal with the small publisher you’ve worked with on two books already.

Now, who knows what’s next for me? I’ve written yet another manuscript. And now, I wait. But if I had given up on working on my craft, reading and writing and continuing to look for opportunities, I probably wouldn’t be here where I am today.

And here feels exactly where I want to be.