The Metamorphosis of a Novel, Part One

The First Edition

With the release of the new edition of my first novel, Before the Season Ends, I thought it might interest some of you to follow its journey since I first wrote "the end." In this post and the next few, I'll be sharing the many published versions there are of this one novel. (Three are with Harvest House alone).
Each post will have tips for writers at the end.

Year: 1990s-2003

1st Edition 2005

Indie Excellence Finalist Award

There's a saying that goes like this: If you can't find the book you want to read, write it yourself.

That is exactly what spurred me to write my first novel. I hoped and waited for years for someone else to write a "real" Christian regency, but it never happened. When I read some that fell woefully short, I thought, I could do better than that. So I did.

Here's how it happened:
Once I realized that in order to read a "real" Christian regency, I would have to write it myself, I spent hours and hours at the library in their reference department, scouring resource material. (Today's authors don't realize how easy they have it now! What is a click away for them, sometimes took hours for me to dig up.) I was determined to get my research right.

Meanwhile,  I had three young labors of love called children, so library--or writing time--was hard to come by. But I would try to get alone at night and work on various literary labors of love--one of which became Before the Season Ends. My husband watched the kids upstairs while I wrote at a desk in a little basement bedroom in our house on Long Island. But there were also days when I scribbled scenes as a toddler crawled across my lap. (The difficulty of carving out time to write made me work harder at it, I think, than if I had had all the hours in the world to do it.)

Little by little the book took shape. After my fourth child was born, I kept up my sporadic attempts to finish a novel. Just about the time I finished it, we moved to Ohio. I spent years homeschooling and dabbling with other books, but I couldn't get away from Before the Season Ends. I spent a year  editing the book with such skill as I had. (Not as much as I've acquired.)

The Game Changer
I began praying about how to get it published. I knew NOTHING about the world of publishing, agents, etc. I did some poking around and decided to send it to two publishers. One--a major Christian publisher--expressed interest and requested the full manuscript, but later turned it down. That close call discouraged me. Nowadays, I would know that when you're seeking to get a book published, you either use an agent, or you query as many publishers as you can find who accept unsolicited manuscripts in your genre. But after only two rejections, I was (foolishly) discouraged and ready to quit. Except that the Lord wouldn't let me.

Little Holy Nudges
I love to tell this story. Here's how God nudged me not to give up on the book. In college, as an English Lit. major, I read my fair share of Shakespeare. In Hamlet, the ghost of the dead king nudges his son to kill the usurper who has not only stolen his crown and his wife, but murdered him to boot. He wants Hamlet to avenge his death but has to remind the famous procrastinator of
"thine almost blunted purpose." Well, oddly enough, God kept reminding me of "thine almost blunted purpose." It would have been startling, except I already knew the Lord has an exquisite sense of humor. I knew, too, exactly what "purpose" He was talking about: my book! It took me years to figure out why He chose a line from Hamlet, however: (in retrospect, it's painfully obvious) Because, like that poor prince, I was an expert procrastinator! After those first rejections, I'd done nothing to get the book published.

There were two wonderful things that came of His reminders.
1. I knew HE cared about the book!
2. I realized it was no less than my purpose (one of them, anyway) to get it out there! 

2004-2005
With incentive coming from God himself, I had the courage to look around some more. I settled upon a Christian self-publishing company (never even considered querying more traditional publishers--you'd think with divine inspiration I would have; but no, because I'm about as thick-headed as they come.) In any case, the first edition was born, and was a finalist in The Indie Exellence Contest. (See picture above)

(To Be Continued...)

WHAT I LEARNED (Tips for Writers)
1. Don't scrimp on research. If I did anything right, it was being meticulous about this.
2. Don't be too quick to give up! The publishing world is tough to break into, but not impossible. 
3. Commit your work to the Lord. And let Him direct its path. 
4. Be flexible. Your perfect vision for how and when your book gets published may not be God's plan for that work.
5. Nowadays, the old-style vanity publisher should be a last resort unless the writer only wants to publish for friends and family. As a publisher myself, I help authors who want to get their books into print--but I would caution any writer from going with a company who will print anything. Back then, I didn't know better. Even so, when I got the galleys, I made endless changes--all costing me--but I was aiming for excellence. If editing and/or book doctoring isn't part of the deal, run, don't walk, in another direction. (And that book still needed editing--don't scrimp on that, either.)  

Click here to see the latest, newly updated and edited release of Before the Season Ends
http://amzn.to/2H7eTLI