It felt too easy. No one else had a publishing story that went, “finished my book, pitched in to a publisher at a conference, she took it, seven months later she asked for more, two months later she signed it…”
Every other author I’ve met has a long list of rejection letters. I don’t. Grace has charmed everyone who’s ever heard about her. I know she’s loved, because those first beta-readers were ruthless enough to ensure the later beta-readers (delta readers?) loved it right off, without reservation.
But good though it is, publication coming so easily seemed surreal. Where was the challenge? the suffering for the art? the constant re-sending of the manuscript? I asked if perhaps we could move up release to the summer so I could get in a book tour before school started, and the editor was open to look at that, if the editing went well, when he started it in February. Everything was going just too smoothly.
Then the shoe dropped, and January 31st as I read the email that the publishing house was closing down and that the contract was voided, I actually thought, “Ah there we go. That’s what I was expecting would happen!”
Now Grace Awakening is off to meet a new publisher and the waiting game begins again. Hopefully only another week or two before I hear, and hopefully I hear that they love her as much as everyone else loves her, and is eager to have her out in the world representing their publishing house! Wouldn’t it be awesome if they fast tracked, and got her out by July so I can do a really thorough summer book tour?
Shawn L. Bird 
appearances February 9, 2011
Tags: postaday2011
I ran into a former student the other day. She’s the kind of kid that it’s easy to make assumptions about. She has flaming fuchsia and kool-aid orange hair. She has about a dozen extraneous holes around her face, some half an inch around. Her arms are an art canvas. At age twenty-two she’s demonstating a seriously colourful personality (though I assure you, she was pretty colourful at sixteen, as well).
So what would you think of her if you saw her on the street? Rough kid? Loser? Street kid?
It might surprise you that though she looks like she’s out on the fringes, she has well-paying job, and you probably would not be shocked that it’s in a piercing place, but would you be surprised to know that she has had an apprenticeship and has been working in her trade since she was 18? Would you be surprised to know that at age 22 she owns her own house, mortgage free?
She may look like a rebellious teeny-bopper, but there’s a lot of sense and responsibility under all that colour. She’s not the first kid I’ve known whose outward face belies amazing brain power. Here’s to those visually non-conformists who show remarkable financial sense. They’re puncturing holes in stereotypes, one piercing at a time.
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