It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here, but I wanted to share some good personal news.
As some of you may have known, along with being a high school teacher, I write fiction. I started writing seriously about 9 years ago at the age of 38, filled with fantasy and guileless optimism about my skills, my stories, and my potential for success.
Life lessons abounded and it was soon clear that while I had potential, I had an enormous amount to learn.
I wrote four manuscripts over the next five years and each one showed me new things I’d done wrong and new things I could do better.
Finally, with my fifth manuscript, I secured a literary agent who then shepherded my work through the submissions process.
The book was rejected by every major publishing imprint save one, Putnam, which gave me a “revise and resubmit.”
I revised. We resubmitted, but we had little hope the book had been out on submission for nearly two years with nothing to show for it. Depressed but determined, I began re-writing my beloved Young Adult Sci-Fi manuscript as an Adult Science Fiction story to try again.
And then in September of 2016, Putnam called. They liked the revisions and they wanted the manuscript. I was elated. Dreams were happening. I was going to be published, but publishing is a glacial process.
It was a two year wait but a week ago, my book, Strange Days, was officially released.
This weekend I did something I have always wanted to do. I went to a bookstore and signed copies that I found on the shelves.
Then I went to another bookstore just to look at my book for sale. It’s still a bit unreal.
Thanks for being the community. Along with the politics and outrage, I love reading about other people’s successes here, and I am glad to finally be able to add my own.