Roll up, roll up…

… Get your ‘Journey to Publication Story’ here!

Who doesn’t love a good ‘journey to publication’ story? I definitely do – I binged these like Bridgerton episodes while I was drafting, editing and querying over the last few years. Somebody wanted to de-mystify the process? I was there with the popcorn and a pen.

So, here’s mine. Before I begin, you can assume the usual childhood love of books and writing, the house stuffed with books (much to my partner’s dismay), and a tendency to treat stationery like crack cocaine. Very more-ish.

The Near Miss (or whatever it might end up being called) is actually my third novel. When I read other authors’ stories about having a drawer full of dusty old manuscripts I used to feel a bit ill. I mean, who could stand to write a 90,000 word novel, or two, and then come back for more when they didn’t take off? I was sure there was a word for that. Delusion? I was soon to discover that starting out as a writer does involve a little bit of healthy delusion, which I’d now probably frame as learning.

I submitted book number one to three agents – two promptly but kindly turned it down, and the third never replied. I put the novel away and got on with life. I don’t think I am wrong in saying it wasn’t good enough. It was a starter novel, a 90,000 word lesson that I’m still grateful for.

Then, in late 2020 (I will let you figure out the catalyst here), I decided to write a second novel. I also decided that I was going to push a bit harder this time, and start taking writing more seriously. Based on what, I can’t tell you – I hadn’t let anyone read my writing, other than those three agents, and the result hadn’t been encouraging. All I knew was that I had to write another, and that I had to be a little more ambitious, imposter syndrome be damned (I will probably come back to this in another post one day). So, in 2021, I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme – an amazing organisation that allows unpublished writers of romantic fiction to submit a manuscript for detailed feedback.

The feedback was good! My lovely reader said that it was ready for submission to agents, so out it went. This time, I sent it out to about a dozen agents, and I don’t mind admitting that my heart sank a little as the first few rejections came trickling back. I’d been so buoyed up by the wonderful feedback from the RNA, I’d begun to hope I had it in the bag. Some months passed, and I was excited to be asked for a full manuscript by a few agents, but they ultimately passed.

Then, in the summer of 2021, I pitched the novel in a Twitter pitch event for National Northern Authors’ Day, a fantastic celebration of northern writers created by Milly Johnson and Trisha Ashley. And this is how I came to sign with Clare Coombes at Liverpool Literary Agency. She ‘liked’ my tweet, which in Twitter pitches is code for a full request, and then, after reading, offered me representation. Signing with a northern agency, through a northern Twitter event, as a northern writer, felt, in the words of my Geordie brethren, proppa belta. This means rather marvellous, for anyone outside of the North East.

We worked on edits, and then the novel went out to publishers… and it didn’t sell. Weirdly, I wasn’t as heartbroken as I thought I would be. I’d started to learn that the 90,000 word merry-go-round would still keep turning. I didn’t have to get off just because the wooden horse had fallen off the pole. I would just climb on another one. So I wrote another book.

This one took me a while. The new horse was comfortable, but the fresh paint felt slippery. I felt the weight of expectation (a publisher had shown interest in the premise through another Twitter pitch event), and the worry of being dropped if my agent didn’t like this book, or it didn’t sell. I wrote a version of it that probably reeked of fear, but Clare saw the potential in it and gently steered me to a full redraft. I wrote it again, and this time it was ready to go on submission.

Another few months later, I got ‘the call’. Clare broke the news that Bookouture wanted to sign me for a two-book deal, and I think I managed to hold a coherent conversation with her. Maybe. After two years of highs and lows, I think I was in a state of disbelief. This state continues to some extent as I’ve been welcomed into the lovely, generous Bookouture family, and had the bizarre thrill of announcing the deal to friends, family, and the ever-supportive bookish social media.

So, here we are. I’m now deep in edits for The Near Miss with my fantastic editor Nina Winters, and firming up some ideas for book two (or book four, if we’re counting the dusty manuscripts). I hope this post is helpful, or at least interesting to other author story addicts like me, and thank you for bearing with me on the above fairground imagery. The books will be much less heavy-handed, I promise.