It all started in the 7th grade when my teacher required us to enter a local essay contest about a historical person born in February. Since it was a class assignment, I silently questioned what these contest coordinators were smoking when they came up with the topic, and spent weeks researching, writing, rewriting and revising an essay on Thomas Edison. The genius girl down the street, who went to a different school, decided the weekend before the deadline that she would enter the contest – voluntarily! – and her only purpose was to score higher than me. Imagine if you will the fight scene from West Side Story minus the dancing. Replace it with bespectacled 11-years old girls who spent way too much time at the public library and wielding extensive vocabularies. Multi-syllabic words were exchanged. Territories were marked. Bets were made. Genius Girl won second place. The only thing I received was a 'complete' notation from my teacher. Not only does it go to show that the 7th grade is a rude awakening to the injustices of the world, but I was really ticked off. I knew I had to win the next year. I just HAD to. The next year the contest coordinators came up with a topic that was a real doozy: everyday life in Colonial America. I found myself researching and arguing the importance of pubs and taverns to our country’s forefathers. I worked harder than I ever thought possible, determined to wow the judges. Boy, did I ever. I won all around first prize. I felt vindicated… for about five seconds. Then I discovered that first place winners received the honor of getting up early on a Saturday, putting on a dress, and reading their award-winning essay in a ballroom packed with very patriotic old people. After surviving that breakfast (and I still have flashbacks while suffering high fevers) I was ready to forget about the incident unless I needed to put Genius Girl in her place. But, unfortunately, it didn't end there. Because the contest coordinators sent my essay to state level. And I won first place. Again. Which meant getting up REALLY early on a Saturday, traveling across state and doing the whole shebang again – this time to a larger ballroom with even more patriotic old people. I thanked my lucky stars when I failed to reach the top three spots in the Regionals. So it's no surprise that I rarely enter writing contests. This is why I managed to surprise myself in August 2003 when I did something completely out of character. I entered an excerpt of "Six Weeks to Sensuality" in the Lori Foster's Brava Novella contest. I had just sent an unsolicited partial of a different story to Brava, but I thought the contest would be a quicker route to get my work in front of the editors. That is, if I managed to reach the finals. A week later I was on the phone with my friend Jenna Petersen, and we were clicking around Lori's site when I found out that I was the first finalist. Poor Jenna wasn't expecting me to shriek in her ear. Her hearing probably hadn't return when days later I got 'The Call' from Kensington about the partial of "Wicked Ways" that I sent in to Brava before the contest. Because of the way the contest was structured, the editors weren't going to know who the finalists were until several months later. Now this is probably the part where you're expecting to hear that I captured top prize in the contest. Oh, puhleeze! This is my life we're talking about, remember? I didn't win – and here's the weird part: it didn't matter. Because the editors liked my contest entry and expanded my original contract to include "Wicked" Women 101. And that was when I realized that you don't have to win to get something positive out of a contest experience. Writing contests aren't a waste of time – as long as you have a good reason to enter them. Okay, yeah, it took me a while to figure that out. And I still can't help wondering what Genius Girl is up to these days…
I stopped in mid-rant about the publishing industry and looked at her like she was nuts. I knew better than to dream that big, but Jane thought otherwise. She told me what to put in the proposal and insisted that I send it right away. I nodded my head as she went on and on, having no intentions to follow her directions. Why? Because I'm not one to get hog-wild about a project that will guarantee instant rejection. But there is something about Jane that people don't realize. When she gets an idea, she can be very tenacious about it. Annoyingly so. When I started getting a bunch of "Did you send it?" emails from her, I went ahead and sent the first three chapters – otherwise known as my unagented, unsolicited, not a snowball's chance in hell partial – of Wicked Ways to Kensington. Yep, I subjected myself to a big, fat "No way. Are you kidding me?" just to shut Jane up. Right away I got an email from Kensington. I truly thought there had been some glitch in the submission system. The publishing industry doesn't work that fast, not even for an instant rejection. ("Instant" in Publishing Standard Time can mean months.) It came as something of a shock when the email said, "… and I want to make an offer on Wicked Ways…" So I did what any author would do in that kind of situation. I screamed. Loudly. The kind of scream reserved for when I see a spider. I also left random and incoherent messages on answering machines across the country. The one thought that kept running through my head like a ticker tape was, "Don't they want to read the whole thing first?" Didn't say that aloud, though, thankfully. When the editor asked what else I was working on, I sent them some paragraphs about my other "Wicked" ideas. The editor and editorial director called me the next day and told me my ideas inspired the "Wicked" Woman concept. Not only am I now a Brava author, but apparently, I also spawned a multiple-author series. O…kay, sure. I can go with that. I didn't even scream. But only because I was too busy strutting around my home Singing "I'm Too Sexy". Off-key. Waaaay off-key. So, after finishing all the happy dances my body could take, I realized three things:
My mind was flashing back over the seven years of writing to get to this point. Countless rejections, some good, others crushing, but most were indifferent. Seven years of crashed hard drives and crumpled-up dreams. There were moments when I would lie on the bed, stare at the ceiling and wonder why I put myself through the aggravation. On other days I would puff up with confidence and do the Snoopy dance. "Mary-Jo loved your manuscript..." Sue was saying. Mary-Jo Wormell, the publisher of Heartline, wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon as Mary Lyons. I have many of her books in my keeper shelf, yellowed with age and dog-eared from overuse, but they are irreplaceable treasures to me. The influence Mary-Jo and other Harlequin authors have on my writing are fundamental and far-reaching. And now she wanted to publish my book. I couldn’t believe it. By the end of our conversation, Sue had requested the sequel to The Wrong Bride. I still couldn’t believe it. After she said good-bye, I calmly hung up the phone and quietly walked to my bedroom. And then it truly hit me: my book was going to be published. I launched an exuberant belly flop on my bed and screamed: "I did it!" As I write these words, The Wrong Bride has been out for several months. The pursuit towards publishing my next book is just as exciting and as exasperating as the first. I still do the Snoopy dance on good writing days and contemplate the ceiling above my bed during the bad moments. But I’m always glad that I had the persistence to reach for my dreams. I’m reaching for my next dream to do it again, to relive the inner glow of achievement bursting through my skin as I scream, "I did it!" Only next time, no belly flop.
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