How I Got the Call

I had just graduated and been living in Nashville for about six months when I was sitting in the dark in my little five hundred square foot apartment crying to my mom and dad on the phone. "If something doesn't happen, I'm coming home." I had moved to Nashville to sing. Only problem, no one wanted to hear me, which is apparently a prerequisite for a record deal. Little did I know that an article I had written about an organization here in Nashville that helps troubled girls and unwed mothers was in the hands of the Founder and President of that organization.

The next morning she called me. She was in the middle of writing the story of how the ministry had been birthed and they had hired a writer to help with the story. But they wanted the story to read like the article I had written. That was when she asked me to come help her finish the book. I said, "Nancy, I don't write." She said, "Yes you do." That was when I realized the power we have to call someone into their destiny.

I had studied Journalism in college, but it was on the broadcasting side. I had written some massive love letters in school, some rather pathetic attempts at poetry, and when I got to college it was songs that I spent the majority of my time writing. I had never even thought about writing books. I loved to devour them. But never had even the slightest desire to write one. But that conversation with Nancy honestly changed my life. And for the next ten years I wrote other people's stories.

During that time I began to travel and speak a great deal and realized that I loved teaching. So, I began writing a non-fiction book that was rejected fourteen times. That was when I asked for my agent not to send me anymore. Wondering what it was that I was actually supposed to do, seeing as singing didn't work, and neither did writing my own books, I was sitting on my back porch thinking, "Wonder if I could write fiction." I had never written fiction a day in my life. I had told a great deal of it when I was little, but had never written any. So, while I was sitting there, I thought, "Where would I set it? How about Savannah." I had been there once, thought it was beautiful. Then I thought, "I could name the main character Savannah and everyone could go around calling her Savannah from Savannah. And there on my back porch my first novel began.

Savannah was a gift to me that I didn't even realize. Two offers later, Savannah from Savannah was published in the summer of 04. I wrote three books about that crazy girl from the south. And I fell in love with her. But more than that, during a really difficult time in my life, she allowed me the opportunity to express things that were on the inside that had no ability to be played out in my day to day life. She was a gift in so many ways. I am finishing my sixth novel now. And it all began because someone said, "Yes you do..."

Denise makes her home in Franklin, Tennessee where she teaches a weekly Bible Study, writes a blog for singles, takes care of Maggie and Sophie, enjoys Coca-Cola and every now and then writes a few books.
www.denisehildreth.com

Pssss...Secret Keepers is out

by Mindy Friddle

How I got the call? Funny you should ask. I'll tell you...a few paragraphs down. You can also find out how to win a "seedy character" package and a free signed copy of Secret Keepers. Scroll on if you like. Or take your time and read about the inspiration behind Secret Keepers, my second novel, just out this week from St. Martin's Press:

While I was writing an early draft of Secret Keepers, I trained to become a Master Gardener. The Master Gardener program teaches volunteers to be community educators by providing information on horticulture and environmentally sound gardening practices. I soon expanded my own garden, which is a National Wildlife Federation "Certified Wildlife Habitat," to include native plants, and I incorporated some of what I learned in the novel itself.

Many of the plants featured in Secret Keepers are real -- Amaranthus (or “pigweed”), for example, is an ancient Incan plant grown from seed in my own garden. Love-Lies-Bleeding is one of my favorite kinds of Amaranthus. It's gorgeous. And what a name, right?

Tongue orchids, which have evolved deceitful abilities to lure pollinators, actually exist. (Think Dynasty. Alexis Carrington. Crafty seductresses, those tongue orchids.) Dragon Arum -- Dracunculus vulgasis -- a plant that smells like rotten meat to attract flies actually exists, too. However, other botanicals in the novel tip into magical realism: “Secret Keepers,” for instance: a purely fictional flower with a potent aroma that evokes a powerful memory of love in a person’s life. After taking a whiff of a Secret Keeper, one character recalls the smell of her first son’s newborn head; another remembers the nape of his long lost lover's neck.

“Soul Shines,” with their eerie, petaled eyes, are preternaturally sensitive flowers, and seem to perceive a person’s feelings (or character). In one scene, Soul Shines appear to look back at a resident in a nursing home courtyard and provide comfort as she recalls her long dead fiancé; in another scene, they lean and shine toward their homeless caretaker in a bank parking lot, and shrink away from his estranged brother, a bank manager.

If you're interested in learning more about the backstory of Secret Keepers-- how The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the tales of nineteenth century plant hunters, and an old letter in a trunk all helped inspire the story-- feel free to visit my website page The Story Behind Secret Keepers. And if you want to know about the bootylicious story behind the cover of Secret Keepers--those boots are on my front porch as we speak-- visit my post "The Bootylicious Cover Story of Secret Keepers" on my blog, Novel Thoughts.

So. About the call. For my first novel, The Garden Angel, the call came one fine May day in 2003. I was walking my dog in the park, trying not to feel stressed that I hadn't had the call. My agent (I'd met a client of the agency at Breadloaf, I queried; my agent then agreed to represent me after reading my first chapters. She asked for the whole manuscript...which I hadn't yet finished. But she provided valuable feedback, and so after a year or two we had a novel to shop) had sent my manuscript out to some editors about a week previously and there's nothing more nail-biting than that...waiting. And so I'd taken my dog for a walk, and not taken my phone with me. That was not accidental--on a subconscious level. I came back and there was a voicemail from my agent who said, "I have some nice news." Indeed. Oh, yes. An editor had "fallen in love" and that's all it takes. An editor to fall in love.

And now for the contest: If you'd like a chance for a free signed hardback copy of Secret Keepers, along with a "seedy character" package of seeds from my own garden--including Amaranthus, Moon Flower Vine, and Hyacynth Bean Vine (and if you don't plant, you can always give them away...and Mother's Day is imminent you know)-- email me: 1) your name 2) your mailing address and 3) in the subject line of the email write "Good Blog Contest." Email me at mindyfriddle@gmail.com by midnight next Friday, May 8. I'll have a disinterested party choose a name out of a hat and that name could be yours. I'll post the winner's name on my blog.

One more thing. I'm about to embark on a book tour, and I really hope to see you there. Here are dates and places. More to come. Check my website appearances page for details and updates:

Thursday, May 14 Quail Ridge Books & Music www.quailridgebooks.com;

Friday, May 15th McIntyre's Fine Books & Bookends, 2 pm www.mcintyresbooks.com;

Sunday, May 17 Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe 3:00 PM www.malaprops.com

Monday, May 18, 7:15 pm Georgia Center for the Book,Decatur Library Auditorium www.georgiacenterforthebook.org;

Thursday, May 21 6-8:30 pm Metropolitan Arts Council, Greenville SC (Books sold by The Open Book)

Friday May 29, Litchfield Books, Moveable Feast Luncheon www.litchfieldbooks@worldnet.att.net

Tuesday, June 2 , Burry Bookstore, Book & Author Luncheon, Noon-2 pm
www.burrybookstore.com

Thursday, June 4th, Fireside Books & Gifts, 4:30-6:30 pm
www.firesidebooksandgifts.com

Saturday, June 6, City Lights Bookstore, 7:30 pm
www.citylightsnc.com

Friday, June 12, 7 pm, Leopard Forest Coffee Company
www.leopardforestcoffee.com

Saturday, June 13, 2-4 pm, Fiction Addiction
http://www.fiction-addiction.com/

Mindy Friddle's first novel, The Garden Angel, was selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program in 2004 and was a SIBA bestseller. Awarded a 2009 Artist Fellowship in Prose from the South Carolina Arts Commission, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson. Her second novel, Secret Keepers, is just out from St. Martin's Press. Join her on Facebook and Twitter.Visit her website www.mindyfriddle.com and her blog, Novel Thoughts.

Winning the Literary Lottery!

In April, 2007, my originally self-published novel, The Richest Season, sold at auction to Hyperion Books in a 2 book hardcover deal.

A writers blog referred to it as “winning the literary lottery.” I had to laugh. Because it implied that getting published was as simple as buying a ticket and waiting for a number to be drawn.

Hah! If only it were that easy. My ordeal in trying to get my novel taken spanned 6 years in total. The Richest Season was shelved in a closet no less than 3 times, as I became frustrated and gave up on the publishing world again and again.

But I kept hearing the same refrain from people who’d read the manuscript in a fat 3 ring binder: Your book is better than anything I’ve read in months. Why isn’t it out there?

That question, which I heard over and over for several years, made me want to scream! Yes, I knew I had a wonderful book! I knew it was well written because I took years to carefully craft it. It began as my Master’s thesis. And NO, I had no blankety blank idea why it wasn’t taken!
But….as a big birthday approached I began to do some soul searching.

I wanted to keep writing. I didn’t want to give up. But what defined success to me as a writer? To be read! And to move people when they read my work. I wanted The Richest Season to be out there in reader land, for people to know about Joanna, Grace and Paul, three characters who I believed deserved to live in reader’s imaginations. I wanted them to fall in love with Pawleys Island, as I had more than 20 years ago.

And so I decided to take one of the biggest gambles in my life: to self-publish The Richest Season. After all, I reasoned, if I could sell houses, which I’d done very successfully for nearly 20 years by then, I could sell this book!!!

I found a small print on demand publisher in California which I’d never heard of, and I was hoping no one else had either. I wanted the book judged on its own merits, not with the stigma I knew it would carry if the truth were known.

The Richest Season debuted in May, 2006. I immediately orchestrated a book launch at a local college. I was now feeling like a bit of a fraud, as it got lots of hype in the local media and most people seemed to have no idea it was self-published. I had no idea how many would show up. I was scared to death. Despite a torrential downpour and with little parking nearby, I managed to fill the parlors. One of the first women who came in, who’d gotten the book from Amazon, the only place it was available then, hugged me and said, “I loved your book. I wanted to live it.” I went on to sell over 100 books that night.

I began pounding the pavement. Getting a bookseller to read a self-published book isn’t easy. The big stores and chains simply won’t. So I focused on the independents. I not only got them to read it, once they did, many asked me to come in for signings. Then it became a staff pick in a handful of stores. In one, The Richest Season went on to become their top selling trade paperback for 2006, outselling The Kite Runner.

The next eight months were exhausting as I continued to market my novel in any way I could, while still working. I racked up 25 signings, some library and senior talks, and met with nearly 40 book clubs in 10 states, many via web cam. Reader feedback was unbelievable. And I sold more then 2,000 books, what some literary books do in a lifetime, I learned.

One night in November, I decided to search for an agent again. I sent out e-mail queries and the very next morning got a call from The Victoria Sanders Agency, asking me for an exclusive. I agreed. Eight weeks later they called, asking me to come in.

Meeting Victoria was almost as good as getting “the call.” After a harrowing trip into New York that included snow, ice and a train shut-down because of a terrorist alert, I was rewarded with a smile and these words from Victoria: “This is a wonderful book!” Validation! Finally! Well, almost.

But she was confident it would sell, and also told me she felt it would sell abroad, as well.

Victoria asked me to add a bit more material, something I’d already been thinking about. She then sent copies of the manuscript to major publishers in New York. Meeting some of them in their offices, hearing their compliments on my writing, character development, etc. well…it was surreal!

Shortly afterward, she decided to hold an auction for the rights to The Richest Season. It was an exciting and nerve racking afternoon, waiting for her call. When it came, I was thrilled to learn that Hyperion Books won, offering me a 2 book hardcover deal. This was it! After years of rejection, I was the real deal!

Within a few weeks, Random House in Germany bought German rights in a 5 way auction, and Mondadori took it in Italy in a preempt.

There are still days I can’t quite believe it’s true. I'm now at work on my third novel, with my second, So Happy Together, debuting on July 7! I am what I had always dreamed of becoming, a real author! And I'd nearly given up.

My advice to aspiring writers with a dream is work hard, persevere, and BELIEVE!

Maryann McFadden lives in NJ, although her heart is in the Lowcountry of SC. She was a freelance writer for ten years, then sold real estate, before returning to writing, her first love. The Richest Season will be released as a trade paperback on June 16. So Happy Together debuts on July 7. You can read more at www.maryannmcfadden.com

Covenant Hall

Our moderator Karin has kindly assigned me this date, April 28, because it coincides with the release of the ninth Bay Tanner mystery, COVENANT HALL, by St. Martin’s Press. The cover, as you can see above, is lovely, probably the best one they’ve ever given me. And the reviews have been wonderful. Kirkus—yes that Kirkus—said CH was “. . . tense, introspective and hard to put down.” You better believe that’s going on all my promo material. Our own Jackie Cooper was equally kind. And even after nine books, it’s still a thrill to hold the real product in my hands at last, to walk into our Hilton Head B&N and see a stack on the Local Authors table.

For the last few books, I’ve tried to create a vivid mental image of the day I actually began a manuscript—date, time, weather, what I was wearing (if it wasn’t my pajamas)—so I can appreciate the entire journey from that moment to this. Those who don’t write full-length fiction may not realize how daunting it is to sit down in front of a blank screen with that vast emptiness staring you in the face, knowing that a deadline looms, eight or twelve months down the road, and knowing also that it’s your job to fill those yawning spaces with letters, pages, chapters. Something others will want to spend their time and money on, an experience they’ll find not just entertaining but worthwhile as well. And then 90,000+ words and all those months later, there are the editorial letters and discussions, rewrites, revisions, more rewrites, copyedits, galley proofing, etc, etc, etc. Often by the time the last version is returned to New York, I feel as if I don’t ever want to lay eyes on the damn thing again.

Obviously, that feeling goes away.

I’m always proud of every book. I know I’ve worked my *** off, not only in the writing, but in the preparing of e-blasts, postcards, bookmarks, signing schedules, appearances, and all the rest of the promotion process that comes with each new entry in the series. I’ve answered countless e-mails, talked it up at groups to which I belong, and hopefully done everything in my power to send my little girl out into the world with the best possible chance to succeed.

Which is why I’ve found the articles here about “getting the call” so interesting. By the time I got it, I’d self-published the first Bay Tanner mystery, IN FOR A PENNY, and had the second, AND NOT A PENNY MORE, picked up by a small regional press. I’d spent the better part of two years playing the query-submission-rejection game and had decided it wasn’t for me. Since I didn’t begin writing seriously until I was nearly fifty, I figured I didn’t have time to waste—The Home was looming larger on my horizon with each passing year. Or at least that’s how it seemed at the time.

So when the phone rang on a spectacular May afternoon here in the Lowcountry, I let my husband pick up. I was on the back deck, overlooking the lush tidal marsh, working on the next manuscript. (Back in the day, I used to write longhand and transcribe to the computer as a first edit.) When he came trotting outside, waving the handset, I thought something was terribly wrong, probably because he could barely speak. “It’s someone from New York,” he gasped in a hoarse whisper. “About your books.”

My first reaction was, “Yeah, right.” But it was, in fact, my first editor at St. Martin’s, who, while visiting family in nearby Beaufort, had chanced upon my first two books. She liked them. So did the editorial committee. And the rest, as they say, is history.

When I finished THE MERCY OAK, the eighth Bay Tanner and the last one in that contract, I’d pretty much resigned myself to packing it in. The precarious state of the publishing industry, along with the rest of the economy, did not bode well for us mid-list authors. Predictions abounded about the death of the printed book, the collapse of the distribution system, and the demise of countless independent booksellers—and some big chains as well. But then I got another call, this one from my agent, saying they wanted at least two more in the series.

So, as you read this, I’m feverishly typing away on the next manuscript while ramping up for the madness that comes with each new release. My husband calls it “putting on our track shoes.” COVENANT HALL is out in the world, and I’m off to do what I can to launch it with all due pomp and ceremony. It’s been a long haul from those first keystrokes to the exhilaration of today.

But that’s my job.

And it’s a damn good one.

Kathy Wall grew up in a small town in northern Ohio. She and her husband Norman have lived on Hilton Head Island since 1994. Her 9th Bay Tanner mystery, Covenant Hall, is officially on sale today from St. Martin’s Press.

The Call

by Cathy Pickens

I came to writing as a reader. That doesn’t, I’ve learned, go without saying. I’ve met several folks at signings who want to write a book but who never read books. That’s another blog.

I love reading, and I knew I wanted to write murder mysteries when I was 11 years old. When I announced that, the head librarian gave me old copies of The Writer Handbook and back issues of The Writer and Writer’s Digest, on their way to the landfill. I poured over those magazines and books, musty from the library basement.

I wanted to know how all this worked. I realized later I was looking for THE PATH. I figured there was a secret entrance to the magical world of “published author.” All I had to do was find it.

I read and I read. I wrote and I wrote.  For years, I looked and listened for word on the magical entrance.

When Duane Lindsey asked me to write an essay for the book How I Got Published, I wrote about The Path … and about how I discovered, after I was published, that everyone has a different path. I haven’t met a writer yet who got there in exactly the same way any other writer did.

There are some rules, though: Good news comes by phone. Bad news by letter. Don’t wait by the mailbox.

For both my first short story (in the Sisters in Crime/Private Eye Writers of America anthology Deadly Allies II) and my first novel, news came by phone. Sue Dunlap, anthology editor and one of my mystery writing idols, called me on a Sunday afternoon. I managed to hang up the phone before I started jumping around and yelling.

The second phone call came while I sat in my office at Queens University of Charlotte, nearing the end of my five years serving as Provost, not because I ever wanted the job but because the president was quite a salesman. That’s another story.

Anyway, Ruth Cavin, the iconic mystery editor, was calling to tell me I’d won the St. Martin’s Malice Domestic Award.

I calmly thanked her, hung up the phone, nodded to the folks working in my office, walked quickly across campus to my husband’s office, closed the door … and started jumping up and down and yelling.

I had only a faint glimmer of how that would change my life. I was glad to be leaving the administrative job returning to the classroom I loved. But the bigger transition was to one-year deadlines, travel schedules, and life as a real, live mystery writer.

My husband didn’t know either what that meant. That we’d travel to Bristol, England and Anchorage, Alaska, and Boise, El Paso, Tucson, Denver, New York City, and Kings Mountain, North Carolina. 

We’ve had a blast over the last five years, meeting writers (mostly of the murderous type but also folks like Karin Gillespie, blog mistress extraordinaire – that was in southern Kentucky), and running into them again and again. The writing and reading community is a large, ever-changing, welcoming, quirky, bookish, fun bunch.

Six books later, I’m so glad the phone rang.  The secret entrance? Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Learn the business. Perfect your craft. 

Take yourself seriously. Persistence trumps talent every time. 

And take every opportunity, at bookstores, libraries, book festivals, to meet authors, to join the incredible community of readers and writers. The entrance isn’t so secret after all.

Interview with Molly Haskell, Author of Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited

How and why has the saga of Scarlett O'Hara kept such a tenacious hold on our national imagination for almost three-quarters of a century? In the first book ever to deal simultaneously with Margaret Mitchell's beloved novel and David Selznick's spectacular film version of "Gone with the Wind", film critic Molly Haskell seeks the answers. By all industry predictions, the film should never have worked.

What makes it work so amazingly well are the fascinating and uncompromising personalities that Haskell dissects: Margaret Mitchell, David Selznick, and Vivien Leigh.

Explain your fascination with Gone With The Wind?

For members of my generation—teenagers in the fifties and sixties—it was forbidden fruit, a book not on approved reading lists but one we “discovered” and read under the covers with a flashlight. (Margaret Mitchell said her own mother wouldn’t have let her read it until she was 18 years old.) It’s a Southern rite of passage, but my Northern friends were just as entranced with those steel magnolias, the flirtatious, rebellious Scarlett, the graces of the Old South, the clothes, the romance.

Why has the film endured?

For all sorts of reasons: it has appealed to every tribe and nationality across the globe as an expression of resistance to tyranny, of survival against overwhelming odds, a fable of loss and grief as well as thwarted love. It can be read (and was) as a Depression fable, but also as the story of a Jazz Age heroine clinging to the perks of youth. It’s a majestic (if one-sided) civil war story, a widescreen epic that pulls out all the stops, musically and visually, yet never loses sight of the characters who drive the plot. And because thanks to Vivien Leigh’s boldness in the part, her amazingly volatile and complex performance, there’s something still edgy and unresolved about the character of Scarlett.

She remains both heroine and anti-heroine—at once seductive and wicked, mean-spirited and courageous, a spiteful teenager who turns, way ahead of her time, into an extraordinarily smart and tough-minded businesswoman. And however much she suffers, or causes suffering, she’s never brought to heel. That is, she never repents and changes, is never transformed into the socially-acceptable chastened lady, in the time-honored Hollywood fashion.

Supposedly Melanie was originally Mitchell's main character. How did Scarlett steal the show and why do so many women emphasize with her?

She was the first real American heroine to challenge the status quo, the mystique of male supremacy, even the mystique of war itself. And the narrow constraints on the female sex in general. She thought it was a “terrible waste” that women had to spend their entire girlhood learning the arts of attraction and how to catch men, and then only use the knowledge for a year or two. She resisted giving up all that ‘girl-power’ to become a drab matron, relegated to the sidelines at the parties. And yet Mitchell did. Scarlett was Mitchell as Jazz Age rebel, Melanie was the conservative matron she became.

Many actresses were tested for Scarlett. Why was Vivian Leigh chosen?

She was fresh, unknown, didn’t bring any movie-star baggage with her. And she had the beauty, the fire, the determination, and the talent—all apparent from her first screen test.

I've heard you've compared Scarlett to Sarah Palin? What simliarities do they share?

A kind of awesome confidence, a willingness to run roughshod over men, women, the rules of decorum, anything that stands in their way. They have their own startling beauty, which they don’t bother to tone down to become more likable to other women. And they’re unafraid of the distress or unease their grab for power will cause. Even if we don’t like them, we can’t help but admire that fearlessness, even if it does come out of insensitivity: Narcissistic and self-obsessed, they possess zero empathy for the feelings of others, especially of men who might feel threatened.

Could Gone With the Wind be made today and still be successful?

No way. That whole kind of filmmaking is gone with the wind and the studio system. Those effects were real, not computer generated. The craftsmen were all geniuses of a sort. And the casting, it was perfect. Even if the rest could be duplicated, those kinds of stars and the whole dynamic between and among them is a thing of the past.

You're a former film critic. Are their any other films that resonate with you the way Gone With the Wind has?

I still consider myself a film critic, or “film critic and scholar” though I’m not reviewing regularly at the moment. This book is an act of film criticism as much as anything else.
There are movies that I consider greater works of art, thus more resonant for me, even from the banner year of 1939 (e.g. Ninotchka, Young Mr. Lincoln, Only Angels Have Wings, Love Affair). My favorite films are not all woman-centered films.

Do you have a must-see list of films for women?

There are so many, but not many of recent vintage. Just check out any number of movies with: Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne, a few with Jennifer Lopez, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Sally Field, Sissy Spacek, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. Some good women’s roles on television series, Tina Fey, Mariska Hargitay. But for the most part, we’re living in a men’s world in movies and the media, and even the chick flicks feature chicks desperate for a rooster!

Molly Haskell is a writer and film critic. She has lectured widely on the role of women in film and is the author of From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. Visit her at http://mollyhaskell.com/

I thought the call would never come.

It was like being 14 and covered in acne smothered in Clearasil as I waited and the phone never rang. I’d check the mail daily and huge envelopes, the very ones I’d used to submit my wonderful future Academy-Award winning novel, were empty.

Except for a letter.

“We regret to inform you that your novel, ‘Heartbone’ is lovely and all that good jazz but certainly not suitable for our current list. Agents’ opinions are, indeed, subjective so we wish you all the best in finding eager and enthusiastic representation for your work. All Best.”

Oh, how I HATE to see that stupid-ass phrase, All Best, at the end of every piece of correspondence from New Yawk’s finest.

After spending most of my future-plastic surgery money on postage, I gave up finding an agent and decided I’d have better luck at reproduction.

No such deal. Why, one day I had to cart my former husband’s spermies to the fertility clinic. I tucked the plastic jar of “swimmers” in my little red coat pocket and demurely handed it to the nice nurse.

After a few months of my having quit writing and my husband changing over to boxers (to free up more sperm from suffocation deaths caused by briefs), we conceived.
I quit writing and begin non-stop eating, discovering the most successful career and most rewarding of the time. Buffets were my Pulitzers. Desserts my Golden Globes for “Best Original Screenplay,” or better yet, best Chocolate Molten Lava.

After my son, now 16 and a golfer-slash-juvenile delinquent, was born weighing 6 pounds while I’d gained 60, I decided to dust off my brain and start writing again.

What else does one do at 4 a.m. with her boobs hanging out and draining milk?

I promised myself a page a day. That way, in a year, I’d have my novel. At least the shitty first draft.

Long story short, snail mail was losing its edge and more agents would accept stuff through e-mail.

I compiled a fairly long list of agents, maybe 12, and sent them brazen queries.
I got quite a few of those crappy “All Best,” form letters and THEN…

Ding, ding, ding. The call.

It was Ethan Ellenberg with a great reputation and offices on Broadway in New York.

“I love this,” he said. “I predict it will go to auction.” Stars swam in my eyes along with dollar signs.

Honey, I signed on the line quicker than a ‘ho takes off her knickers. However, sad to say, my wonderful novel (I think it was called The Recycled Virgin) collected more rejections than I can count.

Not to be defeated, I gave up on fiction and tried humorous essays along the lines of my dear friends Celia Rivenbark and Laurie Notaro. Boom! My agent and I managed a hit, and I got another call, this one from a pretty big New York publisher telling me to break open the champagne.

We ended up doing three books – Ethan, Kensington and me. And then it was over.

We all broke up like adults, only I was left a blathering, crying mess.

“I have no agent,” I screamed. “I’m a loser. A has-been. I’m going to get a job now as a hooker at Croaker’s Rest Home.”

Other writers, kind souls we all are, came to my rescue, suggesting other agents.

And that’s how I got the call from Holly Root with Waxman in New York.
Poor Holly. She has my new novel, “Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle,” which is getting tons of GLOWING praise AND REJECTIONS.

Also, it’s garnered quite a few “All Best’s.”

Susan Reinhardt is a humorist and public speaker. She is a columnist and author of three books, hoping to sell a fourth. Her website is www.susanreinhardt.com To watch her video shows, go to www.citizen-times.com