How I Got Published

When people hear that I have a book coming out, one of the questions I get most often is, "How did you get published?" Since the answer to this question is not simple, I decided to write it out here, in this post, for anyone who is curious.

Writing the Book
Maybe this is obvious, but the first step was actually writing a book. This isn't as simple as it sounds, however. The first draft of Courting Greta was written in 2002, more than a decade ago. It sucked. It wasn't the first sucky book I had ever written and it wasn't the last. But it turned out to be the one I kept coming back to, over and over. I haven't worked on it continuously for a decade, but it's been completely rewritten maybe three times and revised more times than I can count.

Querying Agents
There are a lot of options in publishing these days, from self-publishing to small indie publishers to the "big six," which recently became the "big five" when Random House and Penguin merged. From day one, my goal was always mainstream publication with a major publishing house. To that end, I needed a literary agent. I do not exaggerate when I say that getting a literary agent is the hardest part of the entire process. (Yes, harder than writing the novel.) See, you have to write this thing called a query, which is a half-page letter which encapsulates the plot and overall awesomeness of your book. Ask any author to take the 400-page masterpiece they've just spent months or years laboring over and boil it down into 300 words or less, and you're likely to witness a complete meltdown.

So then you've got this query, and you do a bunch of research and find all the agents who might be interested in your book and you send it to them. Then you wait for the rejections to pour in. Or not... many agents say "no response means no," so many of your queries just get zero response whatsoever. Occasionally, you might have an agent ask to see a chapter or two. And if you're really, really lucky, that request might turn into a request for the entire manuscript and then, possibly, an offer of representation. Of course, this all takes months and months.

I've been through many, many rounds of querying. A few years ago, I actually landed an agent for another book I had written - but she turned out to be a sham and basically ruined any chance that book had of seeing the light of day. On the LAST query round I went through, with this book, I was rejected by over 300 agents. (I think my final count was like 345.) Six agents asked to see my manuscript. One agent offered to represent me.

Fortunately, the agent who offered representation is a guy at the top of many people's lists - not just because he's very good at what he does, but because he's a complete class act and a super-nice guy. This is important because the mainstream publishing industry is still very much a person-to-person business.

Going on Submission
Getting an agent feels like winning the lottery, but it's definitely not the end of the process. Next comes revisions. My agent had a whole bunch of suggestions for how I could improve the narrative. And because he's very good at what he does, he was right about most of it and I spent another few months revising. Again.

At this point, Mr. Agent puts together a list of editors at the major publishing houses that he thinks would be interested in my book. Then he calls them up or emails them and pitches the story. And then we get to sit on our hands and wait for one of the editors to read the book and, if they like it, to make an offer. This is called "going on submission." If nobody makes an offer, you move on down to smaller publishers, secondary choices, etc. Some authors spend up to a year waiting on submissions, and some get picked up right away. Because my book is quirky and doesn't fit well into any established genres, my agent and I were prepared to wait a long time and hit up a very long list of editors.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. I think I only had to wait a couple of months before he called to tell me that one of our first choices had made an offer on my book. It was an editor at Gallery Books, which is an imprint of Simon and Schuster (one of the "big five").

The Offer
How do publishers buy books? Generally they give you what is called an "advance." This is a lump sum of money based on how much they expect to make from your book. So it's an advance on your royalties. My advance is paid out in three chunks: once upon signing my contract with the publisher, one upon delivery of edits, and one upon publication. I do get royalties - eventually - but the advance is kind of like a loan against your royalties, so you don't start to earn any more royalties until that lump sum has "earned out."

Edits with an Editor
So after I got the first chunk of my advance, I had to go through another round of edits with my editor at Gallery books. This is the point at which she would re-read the book and make notes about any plot points or large-scale issues she thought needed fixing. Fortunately for me, my editor decided she was really happy with the book as-is.

Copy Edits
Next the book goes to one of the copy editors at the publishing house. This is a purely technical edit, where the copy editor goes over the entire manuscript with a fine-toothed comb looking for typos, continuity errors, punctuation mistakes, words that get repeated a bunch, etc. etc. She marks everything up, and then the manuscript comes back to me.

At this point I have to read through all of her changes and either accept or reject them (or fix it some other way). This turned out to be the most excruciating part of the process for me, because I use a lot of casual and colloquial speech and sort of atypical punctuation. My copy editor pointed out every one of these as a possible mistake, so I was looking at an average of about 5 decisions for every one of 400 printed pages. Some of them were things I genuinely wanted to change - but most of the stuff that got marked up was exactly as I wanted it. So... Yeah, that took a while.

Typeset Pages
Oh, thought we were done with edits, did you? No. After I accept/reject each copy edited change, the book goes to a typesetter. This person lays out the book as it will look when it is printed and bound. At this point the printed pages are emailed to me in a giant loose pile and I have to go through them again to catch any last mistakes. (And if you thought that by this point there wouldn't be any, you would be wrong!) At about this point I start to hate my book completely and never want to see it again.

Cover Art
This is the most nerve-wracking part of the entire process. I have almost no control over cover art, because it's determined both by the marketing department and the input of booksellers (which at this point is basically Barnes and Noble). They did ask me to give input, so I decided to be simple and direct. I told them 1) I did not want to see faces, and 2) it had to be something a man would be comfortable reading in public. The designer creatively misinterpreted my first request - but that's okay, because I could not be happier with the result. Even though the dude on the cover looks nothing like my protagonist (who does not wear glasses), it really captures the feel of the narrative. And I think the image is compelling, which is important for enticing people to pick it up!

ARCs
An ARC is an Advanced Reader Copy. These are like cheapo versions of the book with crappy covers and the text is not the final typesetting, so there are still some mistakes inside. I've got a pile of these on my desk right now, and I'm supposed to use these for marketing purposes. My editor and agent will send them out to other (more famouser) authors to hopefully get them to read the book and write blurbs which could be printed on the cover. I'm supposed to use mine to get the word out - do some giveaways online, give them to local bookstore managers, book bloggers, etc. We're still 6 months away from release date, so I'm taking my time deciding what to do with these.

Back Cover Copy
This is the text that goes on the back of the book. We haven't really gotten to this part yet. I am pretty unhappy with what's up on Amazon right now (please don't look), but I got them to edit it down a bit for the back cover of the ARC's. However, at some point in the near future we'll discuss what it should say and I'll get the "final cover art," which will be like a huge wraparound of the front and back of the cover. Then the cover copy will be regularized across all the bookselling websites.

Release Day
My official release day, the day the book will appear in stores, is June 18 of this year. Most authors do some sort of release party - like a signing event at a local bookstore where they invite all their friends and family. I will probably do something like this, but I have no plans as of yet. I'm actually pretty stoked that my book is releasing almost simultaneously with three or four other books I have been anticipating for a long time! (Jeffery Deaver's next thriller, Lisa Brackmann's Year of the Rat, Neil Gaiman's first book for adults in seven years... there's one other I'm missing.)

Writing the Next One
In the midst of all this, I'm supposed to be writing my next book. Believe it or not, the process is different the second time around. There's a section in my contract with Gallery Books that says that they get the first look (and opportunity to make an offer) on my next book - and that they will look and make a decision, if I want, based on an outline and three chapters. After a lot of back-and-forth with my very wise agent, I've got an outline and am now working on those three chapters. If my editor likes them, I'll have another sale and then be working to deliver that book on a deadline. Yikes.

Ferry Trip!

On Tuesday I drove Beo out to Larkspur, where we hopped on a ferry to San Francisco! I'd been thinking of doing this for a while, and last time we drove this way I pointed out the boats and Beo was very enthusiastic about wanting to go on them - so I figured it was time.

He did really good, for the most part. He loved the boat experience and spent time both outside on the deck and inside, where he could see out the front. 

In fact, he was very chatty about the whole experience:

"I wike dis boat. I wike dis boat."

Once we had appreciated the bay from every angle, we watched it dock and got out at the port. The ferry building was a great place just to stroll around outside, chasing birds.

Inside there were a bunch of nice shops and restaurants, and although Beo didn't actually let me stop to browse anywhere he was very good about holding my hand. Next we crossed the street to some kind of plaza, where Hawaiian Airlines had set up a skating rink outdoors. It had just stopped raining, so there was about half an inch of water on the ice, but there were plenty of skaters out trying to hone their skills.

We got some chowder in a bread bowl at a nearby restaurant. When I gave Beo a water bottle to drink from, he told me he wanted a small cup. I got him a water cup, but he expressed that this was still too big. I told him he'd have to live with it since I didn't have anything else. He had resigned himself to drinking from a "big cup" when one of the servers came over and said, "Hey little guy! You want some hot chocolate?" He then brought Beo a tiny paper cup with little paper handles, full of hot chocolate and whip cream. Beo got his wish... but better!

I knew Beo had to pee and I didn't want to deal with that on the ferry, so I told Beo he had to go pee if he wanted to get back on the boat. It took two separate tries, but he finally peed on a big toilet. I'm sure all the other patrons appreciated that I allowed my toddler to stand on the toilet seat and pee in the general direction of the bowl.

"Bye-bye, San Francisco!"

The trip back was rather rough, since it was well into Beo's usual nap time. He started running away from me and got in trouble, which is when the extended meltdown happened.

But - we eventually made it back! Overall he did really good and I think we'll try more excursions like this in the future.

Happy Halloween!

Beauty for Ashes

I am not really sure how this has happened, but somehow all the sadness which flooded my heart when I thought of my daughter has been replaced with joy. I don't know if it will always be like this, but maybe as time goes by I will feel it more and more.

I think there comes a time in every parent's life where we must set aside the dream of what we thought our child would be and replace it with the person our child has become. Sometimes that happens when they grow up and follow a career path we didn't see them taking, or marry a person we wouldn't have chosen. It happens earlier, I think, for parents of a child born with special needs. One has to reorient one's thinking from the traditional dreams of college and fortune to something more conservative - self-sufficiency, perhaps, or social awareness.

Regardless of the situation, a parent's ideas of what a child is going to be and do never quite match up to reality. Giving up those dreams is often really hard.

I think that's what I've done. I had dreams for Ripley, and none of those dreams came true. In this case, it was really, really hard to let go. But it was not my life; it was hers.

Now I see that she was wonderful in her own special way, and I am proud and infinitely thankful to be able to call her my daughter. I am glad to have been able to care for her during the whole of her life here on earth. I read something Joni Eareckson Tada wrote the other day in regard to 2 Peter 3:8, which says, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." She said that we often only look at the second half of that sentence. We imagine that in the grand scale of God's time, a thousand years passes in a blink of an eye. But we also need to remember that in God's time, a single day can as significant and worthwhile as a thousand years.

Ripley's time here was short according to my clock, but it lasted forever in my heart.

Ripley Cordelia Hootman

Ripley is named after the protagonist of the Alien films. We wanted a name that, like Beowulf, had a story and a character that embodied traits we admired. Ellen Ripley is determined, persevering, a natural leader who faces her fears head-on. She is a fighter and a survivor.

Cordelia comes from the Shakespearian play of King Lear. As the story goes, Lear announces his intention to divide his inheritance between his three daughters according to the measure with which they pledge their love. Cordelia’s two older sisters swear their devotion up and down, but “What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent.” She is the personification of love as an action: “What I well intend, I’ll do ‘t before I speak.”

It’s probably pointless to try to express what our daughter’s name means to us. Her life may have been short, but we could not have loved her more. This is who she was; who we hoped she would be.

We love you, Ripley.

The Art of Teaching Beo

When you leave your child with another person, especially daycare or preschool workers, sometimes you wonder if you’ve made the right choice. You think, what if they’re just smiling when I drop him off? What if they get mean and demanding the moment I’m out the door? Or what if they just sit around and let the kids watch TV? He seems happy, but how do I know for sure?

Today, the conversation I had with Beowulf’s teacher made me 100% certain I have put my trust in the right place. My kid is what they call “spirited.” To many people, this translates to disobedient, unruly, and wild. Beo won’t, for example, join in with whatever a group of kids is doing. If you encourage him, he will only resist. Demand, and he’ll put up a fight.

Because I’m his mom, I know him well enough to understand that this is not intentional disobedience that must be punished or somehow expunged. Beowulf is an observer: he can watch me do something once, like open a catch on a cabinet, and instantly be able to duplicate the action. With people, it’s more complicated. He needs time to hang back, observe, and process what’s going on. Drawing attention to his lack of participation makes him self-conscious and causes him to lock down completely.

Later in life, I know these traits will serve him well. He’ll be a planner, a keen observer of human nature, an analytical mind. He’ll be an independent thinker, never content to march along with a crowd… much like his mother, in fact! In the meantime, however, I know that I’ll likely have to be his advocate when it comes to interacting with other adults, especially his teachers. Every September will no doubt herald the search for that one teacher who really gets him and is willing to go the extra mile. 

This first time? I got lucky. I signed him up at the first daycare/preschool I visited, a small place around the corner from our house. It was small, convenient, and the teachers seemed nice enough. I also liked the flexibility of their schedule. Since he’s only two, I was not concerned with curriculum so much as just having a place I could feel secure leaving him while I took a much needed break. So the fact that they have a modified preschool program didn’t matter much at the time.

Now, it does.

What I first noticed was how much more chatty he is after his morning at “school.” He was pretty slow to talk and even now feels pretty comfortable subsisting on the bare minimum it takes to get his point across – no need to say “I want some water” when “WATER!” will do. But on school days, he literally comes home speaking in complete, coherent sentences. He’ll stick in that mode for a few hours or the rest of the day. Half the time he’s so stimulated I can’t get him to take a nap.

He also comes home with little art projects, but given how difficult it is to convince him to do any art himself (he’d rather Mommy or Daddy do it for him) I wondered how much of the stuff he was actually making.

Today when I picked him up, his teacher gave me this:

More importantly, she told me how he made it. Or, rather, how she convinced him to participate!

First, she told me how he’d been doing much better overall. They have a circle time each morning with stories and songs, but I knew when I first started dropping Beo off that he refused to sit. Today, his teacher told me they’d realized that it doesn’t work to tell him to do anything… so he was invited to the circle, but never forced.

Now – and this is several months later – he edges around to the outside of the circle, watches for a bit, and finally sits down. He’ll even scoot in close if he hears a story he likes. He still won’t sing – but he’ll move his mouth and pretend!

So she tried the same thing with his art. She got the other kids around and set them to work, then set out a piece of paper for Beo and told him it was available if he wanted. She then ignored him. Sure enough, he hung around for a few minutes and then came and sat down. So she showed him, once, how to rip the paper. When nobody was looking, he ripped. And then he ripped and ripped and ripped! Finally, she demonstrated how to glue the paper on – and left, pretending to make lunch in the kitchen. And pretty soon he’d produced what I think is a pretty good collage for a two year old!

So I left today with the assurance that, quite by accident, I’ve made the right choice. Beo has found a teacher with the patience and willingness to understand him and give him exactly the guidance - and space - he needs. Whether your child is two or twenty, I think most parents would agree a teacher like that is priceless.

My Brown-Eyed Handsome Man (+1)

It's been a while since I posted last! If you're reading this I'm sure you've gotten the news already, but we're expecting baby #2 sometime in late November. Woo hoo! I'm currently experiencing the joys of all-day sickness. No throwing up, just feeling like I'm about to for most of the day.

Meanwhile, Beo's up to his usual shennanigans. We graduated him from the floor to his own little toddler bed, seen here: 

(Is there a bed under all those animals?)

He was also brave enough to approach another fireman, so he got a second fire hat to replace the one he stomped on. They're not very durable!

Pacifiers, known as Nuks in our household, have been phased out to bedtime and nap time only, although he did backslide during a massive ear infection that lasted about a month and three rounds of antibiotics. I try to limit him to one at a time, because he hordes them and tends to do things like this...

He's also discovered the stool my dad made for me is muuuuch better (that is, taller) than his own little step stools. He's quite willing to lug it all over the house. It's not QUITE tall enough to let him reach the kitchen faucet, but that's not much of a problem...

In between rain and overcast we're starting to see some nice sunny days again! It's good to get out in the yard with grandma and... paint the garage door?

Of course, there's always time for video games, Daddy, and Pengie. HUGS!

I've started asking Beo if I can take his picture. He usually says no. In the following case, I figured he'd lost his right of veto since I walked in on him sitting on top of the washing machine. This is a no-no, mainly because he has to climb the shoe rack to get up here.

We've also been trying to cook a bit with Beo. This requires the patience of a saint. Not only does he like to eat all the ingredients (including plain old flour), he delights in turning the lights off at inconvenient moments.

Anyone else starting to see a resemblance...?

Below is what happened when I attempted to make deviled eggs. They didn't last long. I think he ended up eating about 4 whole eggs. Beo was also dancing to Buddy Holly, although with Beo dancing usually turns into running in circles. Then, "Hold my hand while I run in circles and fly off the ground!"

And here is my current favorite photo of Beo. The glasses were part of a goodie bag from a wedding he ended up not attending with us. I bribed him with animal cookies to get him to put them on.