This post is for my fellow writers, the ones who aspire to traditional publishing but haven't quite got there yet. I know these types of posts helped me along the way and mine, I hope, will encourage you to make the right decision for you in your path forward whatever that may be.
Seeds path to getting published has been a long winding and, at times, highly discouraging one, so if you're feeling a little sick of hearing insta publishing success stories, here's a strong antidote to that. Note the date on the above facebook memory. It's taken me awhile to get here.
I think like most writers, I've always dabbled a bit in creative writing, but it wasn't until after I had my first child in 2007 (and read Twilight and thought 'I can write at least as good as this') that I began to take it seriously. By that, I mean I came up with a story concept and set a goal to write at least a little every day. That first book was a bit of semi-autobiographical dreck that I think all of us spew out at one point or another. It is hidden in a drawer and shall never see the light of day. The next project I tackled was Seeds.
I've always, like it seems so many people are, felt inexpicably drawn to the story of Persephone. I wanted to flesh it out in a way the Homeric hymn didn't, but as a first time mother with a little girl of my own I suddenly found myself equally drawn to Demeter's story and wanted to explore it further as well. And, so the idea for Seeds was born; a dual POV Demeter/Persephone myth retelling. I began drafting it in early 2009 and completed it in about four months. My alpha readers were all very encouraging and supportive family members and friends (looking at you Mom, Kim, Hannah, Sam and Marilyn). Marilyn loved my book so much she evene printed out a copy and used her handbinding skills to make me a beautiful book. I'm so grateful for their praise and support! The feedback from my one beta was also encouraging, but just to be sure I hired a professional editor. I know now she wasn't very professional. She was one of those writers who self-published a couple books and then hung out her shingle. That said, though, she was helpful and very encouraging. She paid me 50% of her fee back because she said she had so little to edit in the manuscript that she didn't feel right taking the full amount. She also said she truly thought Seeds had what it took to get published.
In January of 2010. armed with a ridiculous (and likely undeserved) amount of confidence, I began querying. This was back in the day of paper queries, self-addressed stamped envelopes and multiple trips to the post office. If the advice to query in batches was circulating at the time I didn't see it, though I was almost constantly online due to the blogging craze that was sweeping the world. If you want a play by play of my early querying life feel free to take a peek at my old blog Answering the What If. I actually loved those days. I connected with so many aspiring authors and the amount of support was truly heart warming. Anywho, back to the story. I absolutely papered New York literary agencies with my queries, at least 150 or so of them. I did have Query Tracker at the time but it was only capable of tracking one project back then so my exact numbers were overwritten by subsequent querying efforts. In all those queries, I received exactly one singular partial request from Jennifer Weltz at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. I emailed her the partial and on March 18, 2010 she requested the full. I know that date because I made a facebook post about it and it came up on my memories thirteen years almost to the day later when I posted on social media about my book deal with Rising Action (spoiler alert, things did not go as I hoped with Ms. Weltz). Read my next post if you'd like to know exactly how things did not work out.
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