The Call Blog Hop: After ‘The Call’
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This is Part Three of the Seymour Agency blog blitz on ‘The Call’, following Part One on life before ‘The Call’, and Part Two on ‘The Call’ itself.
What happened after the day/night of the call?
It’s not very exciting, but Ann and I went right back to work. By that point we had comments back from our crit team and we set a new deadline to get the finished revision back to Nic by mid-January. We then did a second heavy edit with her following her detailed review of our first revision, and, by March, we were out on submission.
Did you have to give other agents a heads up?
I had four or five other agents reading and I let them know that I had received an offer of representation. It was a courtesy at that point, because as far as I was concerned, I’d found the agent I wanted.
How long before you signed papers?
My contract is dated January 3, 2011.
How long have you had your current agent?
Two years and one week.
Has your agent sold your work?
Nic sold DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT to Five Star Publishing (an imprint of Gale/Cengage) in a two book deal. DEAD will release as a forensic thriller in May 2013, and the sequel, A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH, is tentatively scheduled for March 2014. Ann and I are also planning to release a bridging novella in the fall of 2013.
Do you have words for aspiring writers or readers of your category and genre?
I’m going to take this from a blog post I recently wrote for Jenny Sulpizio’s Write On, Mom blog, because I think it really sums up how I feel about the writing, querying and submission process: Persistence is key. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to try to shoot you down, and others who will resent the time you spend writing or who will dismiss your efforts as unimportant. Rejections from professionals will come fast and furious in both the query and submission stages. But if this is your dream, you have to draw your line in the sand and make the decision to go for it with everything you’ve got. And often that means picking up your bruised ego, dusting it off, gritting your teeth, and trying again. I always looked at our writing as ‘go big or go home’. I didn’t want it to be something I looked back on 10 years from now only to regret not taking the leap. Failure was definitely preferable to apathy.
And now, an exciting announcement from Ann and I. We received an extra special Christmas Eve surprise when a box of Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) arrived at my door.
So we’re doing our first giveaway for a copy of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, which won’t officially release until this May. If you live in North America, be sure to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below for your chance to win. You have until 11:59p.m. on Sunday, January 13th, 2013 to enter and then we’ll announce the winner in our regularly scheduled blog post on Tuesday, January 15th. Good luck!
(Helpful hint - to enter the draw by tweeting about it, simply select that option. Click the 'Tweet' button, and then click 'I tweeted!' to enter. Also, for some entry options, you can enter daily.)
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