Rules to Break

I was fortunate to find a wonderful publisher fairly soon after I’d reached The End of my first manuscript. To reach that point, version #1 went through multiple revisions by yours truly (some say the number of rewrites was close to a hundred. I say it was 142). Although I had a few interested agents, when the offer to publish arrived, I couldn’t sign fast enough. And my publisher (The Wild Rose Press) ended up being absolutely wonderful. Author friendly, all the way. And my editor? Well, she, too, is fabulous.

When it came time to write Book Two, I was in a state of constant activity – between my day job, and writing and promoting, my head rarely stopped spinning. In a good way, not the demon possessed way of The Exorcist. Marketing opens many doors and some of these doors led to meeting truly great authors who write mysteries. But I was also lucky enough to have a book signing at a wonderful bookstore that catered to fans of romance. I discovered that romance authors were just as fab as mystery authors! Life was good.

Although my heroine skates around a possible romance, her main focus is solving a mystery. My publisher’s main focus was on romance. So I got to wondering what it might be like if I’d had a publisher who focused on mysteries? Could I even change publishers when I had a series going?

“No way,” I was told by other authors.

Except that I discovered one mystery author who’d switched after Book Two in a series from one publisher to another. Don’t know why or how, but I knew it had been done.

Fast forward almost a year, and I’d completed writing Book Two (with fewer revisions, thankfully). I set it aside and submitted a short story (my first!) to a mystery anthology publisher. It just so happened my submission was accepted. And that same publisher just opened to publishing mystery novels. I sent a query for Book Two and voila! I signed up for my next in the series along with two more. Hooray!

The road to publication isn’t a straight one. It has many offshoots, which means many different possibilities.

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Keith D E walker
Keith D E walker
6 years ago

Congratulation! coo!

VICKY
VICKY
6 years ago

I love it.

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