Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and that getting a look at some author’s experiences shows you how wide and varied each person’s experience is with this business. What worked for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for another. I can guarantee you no two experiences are the same. But really, would you want it to be? So now has come the time to share the last author’s experience—mine.

First Submission Series:

February 1: Emily Cale
February 7: Gina Gordon w/ Giveaway
February 10: Stacey Kennedy
February 14 = Laurie Witt
February 17 = Liia Ann White
February 21 = Cristal Ryder
February 24 = Misa Buckley

~*~

I hemmed and hawed for months and months before I ever sent in my first submission to a publisher. Mostly because I kept leaning toward the side of “I like writing just because I like writing”. The idea I could actually write and get paid was utterly absurd to me. Surely no one was going to buy my books and actually like the stories I had to tell. No way. No how.

I worked up the email and, kid you not, stared at the email for a good hour before I finally found the courage to hit send. When I finally did, I immediately wanted a do-over. As if there was some way to reach through cyberspace and take back my email. It was actually a few days before I worked up the courage to tell my husband and a good friend that I’d sent something out.

Longest. Four. Weeks. Of. My. Life.

The answer came back and it was a form rejection. In a way, I felt triumphant, because duh! I’d told everyone there was no way people were going to read my books. Pfft. This rejection just totally proves it! But really, the worst part for me, however, was that the rejection came the day before my birthday.

Yeah, that stung a bit. Let me just say, that was not the kind of birthday present I wanted. But it wasn’t as if the publisher knew it was birthday or anything.

Seriously, tho, I knew rejection happened and that what steps I took after the rejection were the important part (I still believe this too). So yeah, I took a few days and I wallowed about that rejection—hello, it was my birthday and my absolute right to do so. After a week, I opened the file and decided I was going to do something to fix whatever was wrong with the book even though I didn’t know what it was.

As it turns out, I discovered it pretty quickly and boy, was I mortified by the end of the first chapter. Anyone who knows me now, knows I use placeholders in my stories when I can’t think of the right thing at the right time—I call them the Brackets O’ Doom. Yep, there’s a reason they earned that nickname…there were still nice, neat little [ ] placeholders in the file I’d sent to the publisher who rejected the story.

BTW, I worked on the book, got rid of the Bracket’s O’ Doom, self-edited it to within an inch of it’s life and yep, sent it back out to a different publisher. It would became my first published novel, Flash of Dark.