My first contract

I’m happy to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Samhain Publishing for my manuscript Before the Storm.

Before the Storm isn’t the first novel I’ve written (it’s the sixth, actually). But it’s the first one where I kept the requirements of agents and editors in mind – so, no chapter-long flashbacks and no great epic unfolding over three novels, which featured in previous work. Instead, it’s a romantic fantasy with a scientific twist, contained in a single manuscript that was always under 120K words. I’m fond of it and always hoped to write the sequels (During the Fire and After the Rain) as well some day.

This summer I quit my job as a customer service agent for a medical laboratory network. I’d been accepted into college, and the job was best summed up this way:









And I thought it would be good to have some vacation time before classes started. So I handed in my resignation and ran away, just like the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

With the time and the energy to research publishers once again, I looked into Samhain. I’d heard good things about them from authors like Christine Norris, Kimberly Nee and Maria Zannini. So I decided to send Samhain my manuscript, since Before the Storm is a romantic romantic fantasy. Yes, it’s got one of those scenes I wouldn’t want my mother to read.

This post gave me an idea of which editor to email with my manuscript. I always like sending queries or submissions to specific people. One month later, I had a reply.

So… that’s the story of my first story.

It's a good end to the summer.