We’re closing in on the final three authors for my February series of authors sharing their experience the first time they submitted a manuscript to a publisher and/or agent–regardless of what the outcome was. Continuing on, we have Cristal Ryder today, who just had a new release yesterday!

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

~*~

Sara, I think this is a great topic and I’m happy to share.

Wow, my first submission experience…it was with Harlequin Spice Briefs. Way back when they were fairly new. I had a piece that was just over 5k. It was erotic romance that had a f/m/f storyline. I had no critique partner, no one to bounce ideas off. It was just me, all on my lonesome. I was very shy with this story too, since it was my first foray into erotica.

Once I hit send I remember sitting paralyzed for a while not sure what to do with myself. Which was a big mistake. I should have forged on with a new project. So three months later when I got the generic rejection email, I had something else in the wings. But I didn’t. I remember feeling embarrassed, not good enough and didn’t do much of anything for a while. Then I submitted to other epubs, getting rejections from them all.

But I didn’t quit once I was on the roll. I submitted my little 5k story to Bold Strokes Books. My rejection from them was a good rejection. I offered to build it to their minimum word count and the publisher was happy with that so I guess I had an R&R in a way. It ended up at 27.5k. I think my experience with BSB was a fabulous one, even though it ended up with a rejection about nine months later. I had the chance to work with a great editor and learn so much from her comments, the process and the business. That experience led to a professional relationship I still have today.

I was ready to shelve the book but took one last kick at the can with a three line pitch. Lo and behold the pitch was accepted, a request for full followed and a contract a few days later. Whirlwind! I was thrilled to finally have a home for my little 5k story. No Fantasy Required was accepted by Lyrical Press and published in November 2010. As of today I now have four books published with two publishers and the fifth is coming soon with the EC for Men line.

Yesterday was release day for my fourth book, Being Bound.

If I can offer any advice, its to keep on going. Take that first rejection and learn from it, take a moment to feel sorry for yourself but get right back out there. Risk and reward. And remember you’re not alone.

I hope you visit my website to find out more about my books and would be happy to hear from you here and at my blog. You can find me at Ellora’s Cave and Lyrical Press.

www.cristalryder.com
www.cristalryder.blogspot.com

Thanks so much for having me Sara!

~*~

Sometimes reality is so much better than fantasy. 

It’s another author offering up in their story the first time they submitted a manuscript and up on deck today is the absolutely wonderful, Liia Ann White, who is also celebrating her brand new release, Hot Aussie Weekend!

First Submission Series:

February 1: Emily Cale
February 7: Gina Gordon
February 10: Stacey Kenndey
February 14: Lori Witt

~*~

When Sara put the call out for first submission stories, it got me thinking of mine. My first round of submissions was for the first book I’d ever completed. And I realized, I’ve never actually talked about it before. So here we go

I spent weeks researching agents, publishers and editors to submit my first book to. I made sure I found someone who represented authors I loved, who also produced quality work. So I figured I’d try a couple of agents first, because you never know what could happen if you don’t try. So I made sure my query letter was polished to the max; my manuscript was in good nick (or so I thought) and I felt good. So, before I could wuss out, I hit send and waited. And waited. And waited.

Four weeks after I sent the query out, I got an email back from the agent. I couldn’t believe my luck! I got a request for a full. So, I sent the full. What happened after that made me doubt myself so severely I didn’t want to write anymore, unless it was purely for fun.

They basically said the book had a good premise and a very unique world, but my writing needed a lot of work. The part I failed to notice was that they actually said I should revise the work, get my writing up to the best it can be and resubmit it!

Of course, being a first time submitter (and an unstable one at that), I overreacted and cracked the shits. I posted on twitter how down I felt and a darling friend picked up on it and sent me an email. She offered to read and critique the book. Now, back then, I knew very few authors apart from this newly published one. I had no critique partners or beta readers. I was basically relying on myself to get the book up to scratch, which, as we know, doesn’t work. You will always miss something during revisions or self edits. That’s why we have beta readers and critique partners.

Said friend critiqued it, coached me with rewrites etc and five long months later, I had what is now Elora’s Match. I tweaked my query a little bit because hey; it must have been pretty okay if it captured the eye of a very successful, highly regarded NY agent, right? During my five months of rewrites, I researched epublishing and thought ‘awesome’. I’d just bought myself a Kindle and knew how much easier it was to get ebooks and the quality of them were mostly as good as NY published ones. So I sent off my query for Elora’s Match to five epublishers and got back five contract offers. What didn’t I do? Resubmit to that agent.

Am I kicking myself for it now? Not really. Every now and then I wonder ‘what if’ but what’s the point? I love where I am right now. If I’d resubmitted and signed with that agent, I could still be sitting here waiting to become a published author. But I’m not a multi-published author with a much better understanding of the business, because of this experience.

And to be honest, something recently happened with said agent going on a bit of a rant because someone gave a negative review of a book they’d sold and the agent didn’t appreciate it. They’re still very highly regarded in the industry (and I’ll never name names) but still, I’m very glad I’m not signed with them, because I don’t approve of their actions.

Basically if there’s any advice I have for anyone, published or unpublished, it’s get a critique partner. I have the most brilliant CP right now and I don’t know how I ever wrote before. Beta readers are just as crucial to an author as critique partners. They always pick up on something you missed, can help you out when you’re stuck and, above all, give you an honest opinion.

~*~

Newlyweds Jaycee and Campbell are stressed. Constantly working, trying to set up a secure future for themselves, they rarely spend time alone, enjoying each other’s company. So, to celebrate their first anniversary, Campbell whisks away his wife on a romantic getaway where he plans to pamper her and lure her into the ultimate relaxed state. But what is his ulterior motive? What secret has he been keeping from his new wife?
Whatever it is, it’s guaranteed to be a weekend full of eroticism, love, romance and some surprises on a Hot Aussie Weekend.

~*~

Liia Ann White is an Australian author, hailing from Perth, WA.

She spent her childhood daydreaming about far off lands, creating her own unique characters. She read books about witches, faeries, demons, ghosts and a host of supernatural creatures and eventually gained the courage to put her imagination to work.

A self-proclaimed geek, Liia collects Disney and Star Wars memorabilia, loves animals and wishes to be the female Cesar Millan.

When not writing, she can be found reading, playing video games or spending time with her two dogs.

She’s a member of Romance Writers of America, Romance Writers of Australia, Passionate Ink, Futuristic, Fantasy & Paranormal Chapter of RWA and Young Adult Chapter of Romance Writers of America.

Always interested in meeting new people, Liia can be found on facebook or twitter most of the time.

It’s time for another author’s story! For the month of February, I’ve asked some authors to come share their experience the first time they submitted a manuscript to a publisher and/or agent–regardless of what the outcome was. Next up is the uber-fantastic, Lori Witt!

First Submission Series:

February 1: Emily Cale
February 7: Gina Gordon w/ Giveaway
February 10: Stacey Kennedy

~*~

First Submission

First, a confession: I’m one of those people who submitted a query the first week of December.  Yeah, one of those queries. You know what I’m talking about.

“I finished my NaNo novel!” I cried along with the other fifty zillion winners of NaNoWriMo back in November 2008. “Now I’m going to get it published!”

I know. I know. Shut up.

It actually turned out to be a positive experience, though. And I’m cheating a little and discussing  two different books because while only one is technically my first submission, the other was very, very close on its heels. These two situations happened almost simultaneously.

The first book was Camera Shy, which was my NaNo novel. It was my first erotic romance, and my second completed novel. (We do not speak of the first one, for it is chained in the attic where it will remain until the end of time.)  The second was Playing With Fire, which I wrote in December. Yes, I wrote another novel the month after NaNo. If I gained anything from doing NaNo that year, it was the discipline and momentum to write novels in short periods of time. Three years later, I still average 1-2 books a month.  So, believe me, I am not ripping on NaNo in the slightest. I could go on for pages about the reasons why I think NaNo is the bomb diggity, but that’s not what this post is about, so I digress. Focus, people, focus!

Anyway. So I queried Camera Shy and Playing With Fire within a few weeks of each other.

Camera Shy got a partial manuscript request.

Playing With Fire got a full manuscript request.

Needless to say, I was thrilled!

Within forty-eight hours of the full request, I was offered a contract on Playing With Fire. Heck yeah, I was stoked. More on that in a minute, though.

Sometimes the planets align in strange, unpredictable ways. Things happen so perfectly, you’re pretty sure you’re about to be punk’d. Such was the case with Camera Shy.

Let me backtrack a little to explain. During NaNo 2008, while I was in the midst of writing my first romance, I moved from the U.S. to Okinawa. This involved staying with my parents for a few weeks, letting my husband go on ahead to Japan, and then I was to follow him with our two cats once he had a place for us. It all worked like a well-oiled machine except for one small problem: someone (me) screwed up on some of the quarantine paperwork for the cats.  Out of nearly a ream of forms, I’d messed up on the one that was a) 100% non-negotiable and b) had to be signed by the Japanese government and faxed back to me…a process that could not happen in the 12-hour window between discovering the error and boarding the plane.

Long story short: I flew to Japan without my cats. The plan was for us to get settled in, and then I’d fly back to the States, pick up the cats, and return. Believe it or not, it was actually cheaper – by a longshot – for me to do this than have them travel by themselves.

Tickets were purchased, and I was scheduled to be hurled across the ocean in a winged metal machine in early February 2009. I don’t like flying, if you can’t tell, which is awesome when one lives eleventy billion miles from anything…

Anyway. By sheer coincidence, the publisher who’d asked for the partial on Camera Shy had a policy wherein an author could follow up on a manuscript if there’d been no answer within a certain period of time. 45 days or something. I don’t remember exactly. What I do remember is that the period expired while I was in the States.  So, I sent an e-mail to the editor.

She responded, saying she was still working on it, but she also made an offhand comment that it was unusual to get an e-mail from me at that time of day, seeing as I was in such an odd time zone. I commented that I was actually in the States right then, and after a few e-mails back and forth, we realized we were not only on the same continent, but she lived about 20 minutes away from my parents’ house.

So… we agreed to meet for lunch.

She told me upfront she wouldn’t be able to contract the book, at least not as it was currently, but she really liked it and wanted to discuss a few things about it. As someone only just getting my toes wet in the publishing industry, I was fine with that. I was having lunch with an editor, for crying out loud!

The next day, I met her at a café not far from where my folks lived. We spent the better part of two hours poring over the manuscript and discussing ways I could improve my writing, my characters, my plots, the sexual tension… everything. It was an incredibly educational conversation, and I came away feeling mildly bummed out that they weren’t contracting my manuscript, but confident that I was a step closer to being able to write something they would contract. That, and one of my other books had already been signed, so I definitely felt like I could do this.

Now, I had also started writing another book while I was on the plane. I was a few chapters into it by the time I had this lunch, and I went home that very day and looked at my outline with fresh eyes.  I tweaked a bit here and there, played around with this and that, and applied everything I’d learned. And I liked where the book was going after that. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing, and continued the story with greater confidence than I’d had when I started it.

I flew back to Japan. I finished that book. I applied the things I knew to the next books. Time went by.

You may recall that I had sold Playing With Fire back in January. Wellllllll… things didn’t work out there. I won’t go into great detail here, but the short version is that the publisher merged with another publisher, and in June 2009, the new company dropped my contract.

Of course I was bummed, but sometimes these things happen. It’s just business, and in the long run, it was a good thing. (The more detailed version of that story is here.)

One thing that really kept me going after my contract was canceled? By that point, I already had another one. The book that I started on my trip, the one that was tackled with the knowledge and confidence the editor had given me, sold about three weeks before Playing With Fire was dropped. Naturally, I was scared to death the same thing would happen this time. I think it was about six hours after the book was released that I finally stopped worrying that someone was going to tell me “Nope, we’re not publishing this one after all.”

But they did publish it. In September 2009, a little under a year after the NaNoWriMo that got all of this in motion, Carnal Passions released my first book, Between Brothers.  On February 21^st 2012, three years and a couple of weeks since that lunch with an editor who happened to live near my parents when I just happened to be home because I screwed up on some paperwork to take my cats to Japan, Loose Id, LLC will release Where There’s Smoke, my twenty-ninth book.

So looking back, I was nowhere near ready to submit my book right after NaNo in 2008.

But you’d better believe I’m glad I did.

***

Lori Witt is an abnormal romance author who recently relocated from Okinawa, Japan, to Omaha, Nebraska. She writes as L. A. Witt (M/M romance) and Lauren Gallagher (M/F romance), and spends most of her days either beating the crap out of her keyboard or fighting with her cats for desk space. You would think a person and two cats could share a desk this big, but nooooo…

Website: http://www.loriawitt.com

Blog: http://gallagherwitt.blogspot.com

Twitter: GallagherWitt