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Now the thing is, like many authors, I thought, “Wheee! I’m on my way now.” But that’s not how it happened. How it happened was, I sold a novella in November of 2006 and then nothing else to New York for nearly another year. Pixie dust runs out sometimes. Or it’s not your time to get the fairy on your shoulder. One part of this process I feel like I want to be honest about it how it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s really hard. Sometimes you want to quit. Sometimes you wonder why the heck you keep doing it only to be rejected. If I said I never got down, if I said I was always totally sure I’d sell more books to anyone, I’d be lying.

This business requires several things: resilience; perseverance; a thick skin; hard work; patience; some measure of talent and luck. Sometimes you sell a three book deal ten minutes after your agent pitches your book. Most of the time you have to wait and be rejected, most of the time more than once.

While I worked my butt off and wrote for Samhain and EC, I also wrote partials for my agent to pitch to editors in New York. Each time she pitched something I’d think, “This is it!” Every time the phone rang I’d wonder if it was her and it wouldn’t be.

She was incredibly supportive to me during this time, as were my friends. My friends who were selling right and left and finally getting the attention their writing deserved. I couldn’t resent the books they sold. They’d worked long and hard and are darned good writers. How could I be anything but thrilled to hear they’d sold?

But there was a tiny part of my heart that fell each time someone sold and I didn’t. It wasn’t envy. I didn’t want to be them, I didn’t begrudge them their deals. I just wanted my own!

It can be hard, this in between place I was in for so long. And heck, other writers have been in it a lot longer than I was. I read an RWR article a few months back from amazing authors who waited, some as long as fifteen YEARS to sell. I was certainly not alone in hearing, “We really did love your voice but this just isn’t what we want right now.” And hey, I like hearing people enjoy my writing of course, but after a while, hearing the “but we’re not buying it” part began to suck more than if they’d just hated me (although I did have one or two editors who just totally and completely hated my voice).

So I just told myself I would keep writing. Keep writing book after book until someone bought me. I would do it or die trying.