Finally!

Sorry I've been AWOL for so long, but I went through a long period of health issues and I completely fell off all my grids. When I got back on the horse, I was busy reactivating my social media profiles, setting up a website, starting a new blog, writing and submitting short fiction, starting another novel... You know, the standard stuff.

Anyway, on the off chance that anyone around here still remembers me, I thought I would pop in and give you my good news. About the same time I got back in the saddle, I pulled out my first novel, thinking that I would roll my eyes and wonder what on earth I had been thinking. But I discovered that I was actually proud of it. To make a long story short, I shopped it around to publishers instead of agents, and it found a home! Disenchanted has been accepted by the Vox Dei imprint of Booktrope. I still keep pinching myself. And a piece of my flash fiction (originally written for the weekly FF Challenge here on AW) was featured on everywritersresource.com. So yeah, I'm a happy camper.

At the same time, one of my sons has seen his music career take off after years of slogging. That has nothing to do with me, of course, or AW, but the synchronicity of it has been pretty cool. We've been excited together.

If anybody had told me when I started that it would take this long... LOL!

Thank you, Siri.

Thank you, ladies. You found the flash story, did you, Carly? Hey Calla, fancy meeting you here, LOL! I don't know how "back" I am going to be, not if I want to get any writing done. This place is way too addictive.

Bob, there is an article on my blog about working with Booktrope that would give you the beginning of an idea. There are things in the Booktrope contract I'm not entirely happy about, but my book was extremely difficult to place. Christian fantasy is very niche, and most of the presses taking it on are very new and pretty amateurish. I didn't want to deal with them and I didn't want to self-publish, at least not at this stage of the game. I had one last publisher looking at the book and I always like to have alternatives, so I submitted to Booktrope also. The "one last publisher" turned it down because I didn't meet their acceptable content guidelines (not too sure why, but I have a couple of guesses), although not without saying some very nice things about my writing and reading the whole book anyway. Booktrope said yes, so after some hemming and hawing I decided to go with them.

So far so good. The people at Vox Dei are truly lovely and Booktrope is a very supportive environment. Authors have a degree of control that comes very close to self-publishing. I am not sure if the revenue-sharing scheme is quite as good as it seems, but time will tell. For me, the important thing right now is that they are giving me a leg up when nobody else would. Vox Dei also is more willing to accept some "messiness" than most Christian publishers. Don't think that means they don't draw lines, they just draw them further out. They are willing to tackle darker subjects than most.

So, bottom line, good support, lots of control for the author, possibly not as financially advantageous as it should be. I am willing to live with that last bit, and even more willing to be proved wrong, LOL.

Yes, there are bios available and, of course, you can ask questions. Which it is wise to do. Not everybody is topnotch from what I hear. You can request an editing sample from an editor, for example. I didn't bother, because I was primarily interested in a developmental edit, and a 1500-word sample wasn't going to tell me much. The Vox Dei managing editor had suggestions for me too. I went with people connected with Vox Dei except for the cover designer. His work really, really impressed me. For that I went to the Booktrope Pinterest board, pinned all the ones I liked and discovered they were almost all the work of one man. A no-brainer. But the designers often (always?) have a portfolio of work you can look at, even if they're new to Booktrope.

No, I hadn't looked at any other hybrid options. I wasn't very aware of them, to be quite honest. I'm sure there were some viable options I missed, but I am where I am now. I don't like second-guessing myself after the fact. So far I am happy.

No problem.