I got a book deal without even turning in one shred of a writing sample.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!
It used to be a lot easier to get a book deal.
I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.
I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.
I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.
I got my first book deal when I was in college, but it was published in Germany, and I could never actually read it.
Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.
I didn't want to keep forcing myself to grind out book after book.
I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished.
I never want to deal with a book once I'm finished writing.