Over a four-month period, I sat down and wrote every day. And then there was a novel, and all of a sudden, there were agents and offers.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.
I wrote a novel, Ghost Road Rules, and as soon as it was done and polished, I began reaching out to agents. I ignored the frequent advice to 'shoot low and try for a low-level agent because they're the only ones that will take a flyer on a new author.' That sounded like bad advice to me.
Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published.
A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'
I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.
I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.
It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.
My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction.
I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.