I
took a few writing courses and began my published, writing career (as
opposed to my unpublished writing career) with a short story titled A Hawk's Reluctant Flight, in a small
magazine called Western People. With that on my short resume, I
had travel and historical articles accepted by other magazines, one
of which didn't pay anything to the author. Then I took another writing course
and one of the speakers was Grant Kennedy owner of Lone Pine Publishing in
Edmonton, Alberta.
At the time Alberta was divided into tourist zones and I had been thinking about doing a book on what there was to see and do in each zone. I sent a query letter to Lone Pine Publishing and the senior editor responded with a phone call. We set up a time for me to go to the city and meet with her and Grant Kennedy.
I outlined my idea and Grant said yes it
was a good one but he thought that the books should be more on the people and
culture of each zone. He liked his idea and I liked mine so we decided we
couldn't work together. As I stood to leave I said. "Well, at least as I
research the zones I will see all the backroads of Alberta." He replied.
"I've always want to do a book on the backroads of Alberta." I sat
back down and that was how I began my backroads series. Over the next ten years
I travelled through and wrote two books on Alberta, four books on British
Columbia and one on the Yukon and Alaska.
My favourite books to read have
always been mystery novels and after much thought I decided to write
one. Since one of the mantras of writing is to write what you know I made my main character a travel writer. She
was headed to southern Alberta to do research for a magazine and was drawn
into the mystery of a skeleton found in a septic tank. When I was finished I
sent it out to a few publishers. One wrote back that they liked it but my
travel background was coming out and I had too much travel information in it. I
was asked to remove some. So I did and resent my manuscript. Again, I was asked
to cut back on the travel info. Again I did. The third time I was told that
this was a mystery and I should stick with the mystery and leave out the travel
stuff. I wrote back and said that the main character is a travel writer and is
working on an article. She is not going to drop that and concentrate on the
mystery. So needless to say we parted ways.
I sent out the
manuscript again and another publisher said they were interested in publishing
it. They had one stipulation and that was that I should add
in more travel information.
I sent the second
novel of what I was calling my Travelling Detective Series to the same
publisher. After about a five month wait I received a letter that told me the
publishing house had been bought out by another one and that my manuscript and
all my information had been sent to them. I waited a few months the emailed the
new publisher to find out what was happening. A couple of days later I
received an email stating that they had no record of my manuscript. My heart
sunk. But a few days after that I received an email from another editor at the
publishing house that they had found my manuscript and they wanted to
publish it.
However, in the time between that email
and the publishing date for my novel, the publishing house was sold again.
The new owner was going to honour my contracts, but in the future wasn't going
to publish mysteries. I knew there was no use sending my third manuscript to
that publisher and after checking around I sent it to Books We Love. They
immediately accepted it and e-published it. After two years of talking
with my former publisher I was able to get the rights to my first two novels of
the series and now all three are published with Books We Love Ltd. as a boxed
set.
Always interesting to discover the many ways people end up published. Any new stories on the horizon?
ReplyDeleteA great story, and it proves once again that writers should write the stories of their heart, eventually, they will attract the attention of the right publisher. Thanks for sharing.
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