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PW reviewed many, if not all, of the entries and they hated Three Alarm Tenant. In fact, saying they hated it is an understatement. For about a week after I got the review I walked around in a daze because it was the emotional equivalent of being clobbered with a cast iron frying pan. The biggest sin in their eyes was the predictable ending. After watching me walk around like a zombie, my husband pointed out that everything they accused me of was something that I'd done on purpose. Jack and Katherine were supposed to feel familiar. The ending was supposed to be happy. It's a romance novel, not a literary work. If it was a literary work, Katherine probably would have committed suicide at the end because she couldn't have what she wanted i.e. Jack in a safe profession. I didn't write that story. I wrote a romance.

I have no idea how I did in the Amazon contest. After the review, I sort of ignored it. My husband and I moved to Chile to teach English where we ended up caught in a scam and fled the country before we were deported. (Working overseas isn't all tragedy and stress, I swear.}) Months passed with Three Alarm Tenant sitting on my hard drive.

At some point that winter I had joined Romance Divas. While lurking on the forum, I noticed a call for submissions for Lyrical Press. I had a short romance titled One Ring to Rule and flippantly said I would give it a going over and sent it along. Then I checked to see who had posted the call. I figured it was another diva. No, it was Renee Rocco, the publisher. Oops. Now committed, I polished and sent One Ring in. I emailed it late on the Wednesday night before 4th of July weekend knowing I was going to be offline for a few days starting the next day so I wouldn't be checking my email every 30 seconds. See, I was learning, I was getting that ego under control. They weren't going to open my submission and be so bowled over that they were banging my door down within moments.

The next morning I had a contract. The moment I learn a lesson, it becomes invalid. Emma Wayne Porter, the submissions editor, said she had intended to just look at the story before logging off and then couldn't stop.

This is why I love working with Lyrical Press. It is the biggest mutual admiration society I have ever been part of and super professional to boot. Ask a question and it gets answered within hours. Send in a manuscript, get accolades. Show a little enthusiasm and get it reflected right back. Plus, at least in my opinion, Lyrical has the most beautiful covers. I look at the coming soon page, whether I'm on it or not, and swoon – and I'm the wife of a professional artist so I'm not easily wowed. Like jewels those covers are.

Still, I hesitated before I submitted my baby to them. One Ring was a weird little one off that I wrote because a friend dared me to use the name Kent Farrington for a hero and because I had a punchline. I never expected it to get published so if something awful happened, eh. Nothing awful happened. After the year I had, it's not surprising that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was actually waiting for a whole Payless to come down on my head.

But it didn't. So in October, I submitted Three Alarm Tenant. They gleefully accepted. A few months later I entered that wonderful period known as editing.

Editing is a soul crushing experience. I love my editor. I really do. Pam is a wonderful person and very even handed with critiques and compliments. However, at this point I had edited this story – I don't know. You can go back and count if you want, but I'm sort of afraid. After that many edits and critiques, to be told Three Alarm Tenant wasn't perfect was – well, soul crushing. Worse yet, I had to admit that the comments she made were right. Dear lord, I had let people read it in this state? No wonder Harlequin rejected it! Gary was a jerk. What was Katherine doing with him? Was she some kind of idiot? Why did 75% of my sentences begin with a pronouns? Every sentence has the same structure! I should have my keyboard taken away and my fingers broken so I never write again.

Flaw #4. Gary was a jerk. He never made Katherine his beneficiary, leaving her in the lurch when he was killed. When he was alive he didn't pay attention to her either. Why the heck did she stay with him and why was she still mourning him?