Book birthday week in images

For Whisper Falls, the first official week of life has been a lot of fun. I've been obsessive about watching the numbers, which are fine. Reviews have been good. And some readers have tweeted or emailed me with the nicest messages.

Here are a few images from some of the events of the past week.

The lovely young lady beside me is the freelance editor Laura who helped me polish Whisper Falls before it sold.

I'm signing a book at a private launch party. (Thank you, Lisa!) The pen was made for me by a high school classmate. (Thank you, Lou!)

My husband snapped the above photo at my first public book signing at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC.  The lovely lady before me is a fellow Mississippian who heard about the book on TV and came to meet me. Waiting politely and patiently at the side is Emilia, the daughter of one of my critique partners.

This last image was taken at the Cary Community Library. The county library system is carrying my books; thanks to them for supporting local authors!

Jitters that did not come from coffee

To borrow a phrase from my agent, we are on submission.

Writers are in a golden age, I think. We are no longer limited to one channel for selling our work. Ten years ago, if we wrote a great book, we had to find a publishing house (PH) willing to take a risk on us.  The book had to be different enough to be fresh and unique, but similar enough for the PH to understand how to promote it and where to shelve it in bookstores. So, yeah—fresh, unique, and the same as everything else. Quite the trick.

Today, if no PH will buy our great book because it's too risky, authors have two choices: 1) try self-publishing or 2) hope the market changes so that we can try again later.  There are pros and cons to both.

I'm sticking with the second option for now. Its pros are more compelling for me than its cons. I like having professional help with editing, distributing, and promoting my books—and those qualities tend to be the strengths of publishing houses.

Several years ago, I wrote a book called I WISH. It finaled in an international writing contest known as the Golden Heart®. It caught the eye of my literary agent, who signed me because of I WISH.

We tried for months to sell IW.  We came really close a couple of times.  Even though the responses was positive, the answer was the same. This book is too different. Too risky. We don't know how to market it.

Fine. Whatever. I archived IW and started something new.  After that something new sold, I pulled I WISH out of archive and took another look.  The world had changed enough in the interim that I thought this book still held promise.

First, I have changed. I am a better author now. I've practiced hard, taken classes, and improved my skills at processing feedback. Secondly, technology has changed. The characters have new computers, devices, and information available to them. Thirdly, the market has changed. E-books have expanded the possibilities. Young Adult fiction, with its willingness to experiment with "formulas," has pushed the market along new and exciting terrain.

Given all of those changes, I took my much-loved I WISH apart and put it back together.  I worked hard. I hired a freelance editor and 2 teen beta readers. I listened to them and applied their suggestions. And together, we've made IW even better than before.

My agent has sent the book out there into the publishing world. It could be weeks or months before we know anything.  Until then, I wait for good news, with the jitters in full force.

There is never too much of a good thing

I have read Whisper Falls all the way through at least a dozen times.

I have written (and re-written) every word in the book, all 90,000 of them.

The characters are more familiar to me than most people I know.

And yet, I never get tired of this book. I really love the hero and heroine, the problems they face, and the solutions they discover.

I am so glad that Spencer Hill bought a trilogy, because it means I get paid to spend more time with Mark and Susanna, the heroes of Whisper Falls.  I'm in the middle of Book 2 right now—even as I'm wrapping up the final details with Book 1—and we are having a great time getting the second part of their story out.

Emails and phone calls have been zipping between here and New England (where my editors live). My daughter is primed for a quick, final review of Book 1 (which she has already read three times).  My freelancer is reading through the first draft of A Whisper In Time. The whole process is exhausting and exhilarating.

I love every minute of it!

Distracted by shiny things

I'm writing the first sequel to Whisper Falls.  Its working title is A Whisper in Time, which I think the publisher will keep but you never know.

Contractually, I was given about nine months to write the first sequel.  That sounded moderately terrifying although, of course, I did agree to the terms.

I am now a few short weeks away from the due date for the first draft. I had my writing schedule perfectly poised to meet that date, with two weeks allotted for a well-deserved break while my freelancer reviewed my new masterpiece. [This is a warning about the fragility of my ego, Miss Free Lancer.]

'The best-laid plans of mice and men...'

Last Saturday night, just about bedtime, I smiled with satisfaction as I saved off my manuscript. It was on track. I was happy.  All was right with the world.  I would check my email one more time before sleeping.

There was a brand new email in my inbox: Edits for Whisper Falls.

My husband saw the message and said, "Somebody is not going to sleep now."

He was so right.  I was up until the wee hours of the morning reading through those edits.  A week later, I'm still making my way through them.  And that beautifully-arranged schedule for Sequel 1—totally mangled.

Here's hoping I catch up this weekend!

Thank You, Laura

My agent and I believed that Whisper Falls was a really good book, so we did what often happens in such cases. We submitted it to editors at publishing houses.

Months passed. No one offered to buy the book. And their feedback made me sigh (which is better than making me cry.)

• Time-travels are a hard sell.
• The story needs to be tighter.

I couldn't do anything about the first excuse.  But I could do something about the second. That's where Laura came in.

Laura is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, magna cum laude in English, whose dream job is to be a book editor.¹ She's also one of my daughter's roommates.  I needed editing advice, and Laura wanted to freelance-edit--a match made in writer's heaven.

We joined forces to make my book the best it could be. Laura's editing style was gloriously unobtrusive. In response to her gently-posed questions, I was able to revise the book with my ideas, my words, and my voice.  It was the same story, just better.


Three months later, my agent resubmitted the book.  We received an offer to buy Whisper Falls in four days.²

Thank you, Laura! 

1. I would highly recommend Laura to other novelists in need of freelance editing.³
2. Results are not, of course, guaranteed. Editing advice may free you to write a better book, but you still have to have a great voice, a great concept, and great market timing in order to win contests, land an agent, or sell.
3. The publishing house was so impressed by how polished my manuscript was that they have offered Laura contract copy-editing work.