Blogfest 2009

It was for me! It took five years of submitting HUSH, HUSH before I could finally announce to the world that I had a real, live book deal. I wanted to quit so many times along the way, but if there’s one thing harder than getting a book published, it’s walking away from a dream. I just couldn’t do it. So I kept rewriting, resubmitting, rewriting, resubmitting…

I think luck plays a part in getting published, too. Or, if you don’t like the word luck, you could say timing is important. Getting a book published often requires the right book, the right agent, the right editor, the right publisher, the right marketing team, the right audience…the list could probably go on a bit longer. Fortunately, I feel incredibly lucky that while it took me forever to write the right book, everything seemed to fall into place quickly after that. A week after my agent submitted HUSH, HUSH to editors, I accepted a two-book deal, which was the start of what has been one of the most exciting years of my life. I think snagging a book deal is often viewed as crossing the finish line of a long, uphill race, but in reality, it’s just the beginning. Of course, it’s much easier to keep running once you know you have an entire publishing team cheering you on!

I <3 running. I won’t last more than ten minutes indoors on a treadmill, but running outside on a warm summer morning, I can easily go six or seven miles. There’s something about running that makes me feel like I’ve cleaned out the cobwebs in my mind, and I can get on with my day.

Other hobbies include gardening (fresh fruit, yum), shopping for shoes, and sprint triathlons. I’m also on a mission to try every flavor of ice cream under the sun. I’m a total ice creamaholic! Some of my favorite flavors are Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch, and Coldstone Creamery’s Peanut Butter Cup Perfection and The Pie Who Loved Me.

Invisibility, hands down! I went through this period in my life where I wanted to be a spy, and can you imagine how invisibility would come in handy to a spy? Eavesdropping, making a quick escape, avoiding rabid salespeople at the mall…It’s like the ultimate camouflage.

I had a lot of stories floating around in my head when I was growing up, but the first time I remember writing one of them down was in the third grade. I wrote a play about Santa Claus, and my teacher was good-humored and supportive enough to let me hold auditions and rehearsals during recess, and then my classmates and I performed the play for the rest of the class.

Apparently third grade was a magical year for me, because it was also the year that I watched the movie Romancing the Stone for the first time. The heroine of the story is a romance novelist, and after finishing the movie, I enthusiastically announced to my mom that I was going to grow up to be a romance writer, too. By the time I got to college, I’d long since forgotten my dream of becoming a writer, and I majored in health and zoology (I wanted to be a marine biologist or a spy). A few years after graduation, my husband registered me for an online writing class for my twenty-fourth birthday. He’d debated between the writing class and Japanese cooking lessons, but on a whim went with the writing class. Fate, I tell you! It was in that class that I started writing what would eventually become HUSH, HUSH.