Frequently Asked Questions
- How did you come into writing?
- Where do you get your story ideas?
- How did you find an agent/publisher?
- Do you have a disciplined writing schedule?
- What do the people of Battle Lake think of your mystery series?
Grandpas are full of lovePeople loved it. Aunts hugged me, cousins were jealous, uncles asked me to immortalize them next. My poetry skills have not evolved since that day, but the enchantment with words and their power to make people see the world through my eyes has grown inside of me like a watermelon seed.
Grandpas are full of tickles
But grandpas are especially full of pickles.
I finished my first novel when I was 26. It featured three women traveling across the United States, three women suspiciously like myself and the two best friends I had taken a road trip with a couple years earlier. Like most first novels, it was embarrassingly self-involved, full of overwritten description and twenty pound dialogue tags: "Why doesn't my alcoholic father accept me for who I am?" Hannah asked pityingly, rubbing the burning, salty tears from her chocolate brown eyes.
Amazingly, no publisher would take a look at the first three chapters. (The fact that I was submitting directly to publishers shows just how green I was.) I tried some light revising, working under the new author misconception that my work was great and the world just wasn't ready for it yet. When the adding of more adjectives didn't net me a three-contract book deal, I took a sabbatical from writing the Great American Novel and got a real job. I ended up with two Master's degrees, one in English and one in Sociology, and a teaching job at a rural technical college.
But, like most writers, I couldn't stop thinking of book ideas, writing down sparks of description or snatches of conversation that I overheard and would love to write about, feeling lazy and envious when I read a fantastic novel. When the nagging sense of ignoring something important got too strong, I started writing May Day, the first in my Murder by Month series.
It turned out mystery writing was an excellent fit for me. I enjoy structure, adventure, humor, justice. My first draft was complete, I thought, at 45,000 words. Confident that I had found my niche, I sent out 50 query letters and received 50 rejections. I researched the field, poring over the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime websites, reading all that Preditors and Editors had to offer me, camping out in Jeff Herman's fantastic reference book as well as the Literary Marketplace and AAR. Out of all those resources, two points stuck with me: no one would read a book shorter than 50,000 words, and if you're writing a mystery, publishers only want series.
I hired a freelance editor and pumped her up to 52,000. Next, I wrote June Bug. Then, and only then, did I begin my systematic plan of attack to wear down the publishing Behemoth. I sent out 200 query letters. When the rejections started trickling in, I sent out 150 more. Not an agent or small press was spared. If they represented books, they heard about May Day and June Bug.
If you're keeping score, that's three books written, zero books published. Why did I put so much effort into this? Because when I write, I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time. How did I know May Day and June Bug didn't suck on five different levels like my first novel? Because I had done the research, including reading nearly forty books in the mystery genre, I had studied what made them great, and I had sought out and adhered to feedback from a reliable and well-recommended editor.
Finally, a bite. I found an agent. We never met -- she lived out west on a commune, where she edited technical manuals and studied the healing power of crystals. After six months and a handful of offers from publish-on-demand companies, we parted ways amicably. I found another agent shortly after that, and after a year of rejections from New York publishing houses, she found my books a home with Midnight Ink, an innovative new imprint of a respected Minnesota publishing house.
May Day came out in March of 2006, has received critical acclaim, and is available anywhere you can buy books. June Bug comes out in March 2007, Knee High by the Fourth of July in September 2007, and August Moon in March 2008. I'm also developing a series which I hope to shop to larger publishing houses, and working on a mainstream fiction novel outside of the mystery genre.
So, as of today, I'm at 423 rejections and two novels. Most people would have given up a while ago, and there is a word for those type of people: sensible. The rest of us, we're called writers.