I SOLD MY SECOND BOOK!!!!

I was going to title this post "Woes to Wows," but I have a feeling my current title will get more attention.

Anyway, as of November 18, 2009, I was offered a contract for my second book!!!

It had been exactly a year and six days since I'd received an offer for my first book. Sadly, I had submitted seven of my finished manuscripts a total of twenty-five times to a variety of ten publishers. Crazy, huh? The first twenty-two of those twenty-five submissions were rejections, of course, though okay, in six of the rejections, an editor was interested enough to ask me to resubmit my story after I made revisions, so we could call those half rejections if you like (sounds better to me, anyway).

Twenty-two fails out of twenty-five tries... and all within twelve months. You can probably imagine my frustration and mounting depression. But I can’t say I learned nothing from the experience… and I’m still learning. A writer can find out a lot about a publisher from a rejection letter, even some things they don’t mention in their submission guidelines. Some places don’t want the secret-baby, billionaire’s mistress kind of theme in their books and other places would actually prefer to receive these category-line plots. Some places want an even mix between hero and heroine’s point of view. Other places want it to be mainly HER story (this is all in the romance publishing world, by the way--I'm not so knowledgeable in other genres). I could go on with examples, but I won’t bore you. My main point is: it’s all a matter of trial and error.

And out of twenty-five tries, I made twenty-two errors (yep, that sounds like me). Just three more to go and I’d be out of submissions...All filled up with rejection. So, when reply twenty-three showed up in my Inbox on the morning of the eighteenth, I wasn’t so optimistic (Imagine that). But I opened the letter anyway… and in the blink of an eye (well, okay, I blinked a few times to make sure I was seeing what I was really seeing), all my woes turned into one big, “Wow.”

I just sold my second book.

At first, I was a bit breathless and way too excited, I couldn’t have told you much of anything past, “Wow. It’s a miracle.” But since then, I've calmed down AND received my signed contract, so I’ll spill all the juicy details I know. This book is an ADULT romance as opposed to my first book, which is a young adult romance. It will be published by the same publisher as my first: The Wild Rose Press.

It's currently titled THE TROUBLE WITH TOMBOYS, and I think that will stay the same. In a rating scale of sweet, sensual, spicy, hot, to erotica, it's "hot," which will be really embarrassing for me when it comes out. For people that know me, there will be a lot of gasping going around if they read this story. "Linda Kay! I can't believe you wrote something that... that... naughty." But there's a lot more to it than just bedroom scenes, so don't worry too much.

Since I'm still in the editing stage, there is no release date set yet, but fear not, I will most definitely keep you updated on those details. And if you want to know what it's about, here's my one line blurb : Grady Rawlings can't seem to get over the death of his wife, but tomboy B.J. Gilmore refuses to give up on him until she drags him back to the land of the living. And that's all I have to say about that.

So, here’s my motto for the day: Keep on submitting; it does eventually pay off!

On another funny note, a few hours after my big "Holy Cow, I sold a book" moment, I received rejection number twenty-three. SOMEONE must want to make sure I stay humble, huh?!