A few days ago a friend asked me what my secret was: how did I make that almost impossible first book sale to one of the largest, finest publishers in the industry?
I used to tell my mom I had a theory: Being in the right place at the right time was simply a byproduct of being in a lot of places at a lot of times. The more places you were in, the greater your odds of something perfectly, wonderfully serendipitous happening. (My mother wisely pointed out that being in the wrong place at the wrong time was a byproduct of precisely the same thing, but hey—no balls no blue chips.)
Operating on my half-assed theory, when I began pursuing my dream of becoming one of those people lucky enough to get to do what I love every day for a living, I sent out to multiple agents and publishers, non-exclusives, submitting tirelessly, accumulating one rejection letter after another. To this day, that fat binder of all the reasons I was doomed to fail sits on a shelf in my office, reminding me to never give up.
Eventually, based on a sheer numbers game, I think, I landed an agent and one would think the story wraps up nicely there: said agent submits manuscript utilizing her excellent resources and connections, publisher offers—presto, success.
It wasn’t that simple. The fact is, I never would have made that first sale if someone hadn’t run out of paperclips.
Years after the incomparable Maggie Crawford made an offer for my first two books, my wonderful first editor, Lisa Stone (whose name I used for the heroine in The Highlander’s Touch) told me the story about how I ‘really’ got discovered.
Late one night as Lisa was getting ready to go home, she picked up the first fifty pages of five manuscripts she had on her desk to take home and read over the weekend.
Mine was NOT one of them. Mine was sitting, abandoned and forgotten, in an empty office down the hall on the desk of an editor who’d recently left Bantam Dell. Editors are deluged by submissions from unknowns and once an editor leaves a publishing house, the teetering pile of submissions on his or her desk usually goes straight to the dreaded slush pile, where it collects dust in a dark closet before being relocated to the trash bin.
As Lisa was packing up to go, she realized she needed paper clips and didn’t have any in her desk. Rather than walk all the way to the supply room, she did what everyone else was doing—went to raid an ex-editor’s empty office, since it was much closer.
When she walked into that office, she sat her five manuscripts on top of a pile of submissions, got some paperclips, picked up her work and went home. Later that night, she read through the five manuscripts but found nothing exciting. She was about to call it a night when she realized at the bottom of her pile was a sixth manuscript addressed to the ex-editor. She’d grabbed it by mistake when she picked hers up. Out of sheer boredom, she began flipping through it.
And loved it. And took it to Maggie Crawford the next day. And Bantam Dell made me an offer.
That was my manuscript—destined for the slush-pile, the dark closet, the trash bin, never to be seen, picked up and read by accident, only because another editor ran out of paperclips and didn’t feel like walking to the supply closet. Freaking paperclips. That’s how I got discovered.
Being in the right place at the right time. Being in a lot of places at a lot of times. Never give up. When you chase a dream the Universe conspires to help you get it. 🙂
2 Responses