Resolution 2018: Resolve Nothing. By Patricia Beal.

Because why bother?

Let me tell you about 2017. It was completely bonkers. All my plans fell apart and all the gains came out of nowhere—God's perfect gifts.

I planned a smooth debut launch. Instead, on the night before my first novel came out, we had a family situation so intense and scary that the novel was the last thing in my mind.

I had hotel reservations and booked flights to attend two writers conferences and one readers retreat in 2017. I had to cancel everything to be with family. That was the right and the wise thing to do.

The plan was to stay in El Paso now that my husband is retired. But the old North Carolina house didn't sell, so we moved into it. Yep. Back to where it all started. Fort Bragg.

The plan was to transition the kids from their Texas public school to a Christian academy in North Carolina. Within a month it was clear that they couldn't accommodate my son's unique needs, and in late September I got a license to homeschool. 

The plan was for my daughter to stay at the academy, but she now wants to come home too. So my home school is about to double in size. After the Christmas break, she will begin receiving her education at home too. 

I expected Les Stobbe to continue being my agent. Instead, he decided to retire from agenting and sold his agency to The Steve Laube Agency, so I'm with them now.

I didn't plan to have an audiobook. But looks like one will happen soon. 

A Season to Dance is now available in Portuguese (an old dream, since I have a lot of Brazilian followers and since my family is there and no one speaks English). But the paperback travels from here, and it takes time. The book is expensive too. Brazilians are not into e-readers, so the ebook is not much of a solution. The result? We're not selling as well as we had hoped. Can we sell? Yes. But it will take a big effort. It will be time consuming. Right now I can't do all I would like to do. I'm editing a manuscript that has to be finished by January 3.

Bonkers. Just bonkers.

Am I hopeful? Absolutely. A lot of these unexpected changes seemed scary at first, but have become a blessing. 

The problem? I'm exhausted. I can't keep this up.

So I hereby resolve to resolve nothing. If I don't have resolutions and let God drive in peace, maybe I can be less tired, and I can enjoy the journey more. I want to take this trip one stop at a time. Now it's manuscript work. Later it will be...

Wait. Nope. That's planning.

I don't know what the next stop is. I'm at the manuscript-work stop. When God shows me the next stop, I will take that in and go from there. 

How about that? Can you live that way? Do you do that already? What are your end-of-year rituals and/or evaluation processes?

Love,
Patricia

Patricia Beal writes contemporary fiction and is represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency.

Her debut novel, A Season to Dance, came out in May (Bling! / Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas 2017).

She’s a 2015 Genesis semi-finalist and First Impressions finalist. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati in 1998 with a B.A. in English Literature and then worked as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army for seven years. She and her husband live in North Carolina with their two children.

Goodreads - www.goodreads.com/bealpat

Facebook - www.facebook.com/patricia.beal.author

Pinterest - www.pinterest.com/patriciasbeal

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Web - www.patriciabeal.com

"Don't Sign the Contract. I'll Call Tomorrow..." – Katherine Reay's Road to Publication

Patricia Beal here :) Please welcome author Katherine Reay to the blog once more. Her fifth novel comes out next week, and she's here today sharing her incredible and most unusual journey to publication. Enjoy! 

How did you get your first publishing contract?

That is such a fun story, and a longish one…

When I started querying for Dear Mr. Knightley, I received over thirty rejections – and those were the agents willing to reply at all. Just as I was about to give up, a small publishing house offered to buy the manuscript for an ebook collection. I’d met the publisher a couple years earlier when DMK was still an idea rather than a novel.

As I printed the contract, my inbox beeped with an email from a writers group. I opened it and found my picture, a random galley shot from a conference, staring back at me under the headline “Why You Need An Agent.” Flabbergasted (that word actually works here!), I immediately wrote the head of the group, explained my situation, noted my picture, and asked if I needed an agent. He wrote back that, yes, an agent was necessary and not to sign any contract without one.

But who? So many agents had turned me down. Instead of going back to any of those agents, I went to my bookshelves and pulled down books I admired. In the acknowledgments, one agency’s name turned up in three books out of ten. I looked up the website, saw a man’s picture, and felt in my heart, “That’s your agent.” It was an agent I hadn’t queried because the website said a writer needed to be previously published. It also said the writer was to write a query and patiently wait – six to eight weeks. I didn’t have six to eight weeks. I had a contract with a deadline. I broke all the rules and called.

I was shocked when the agent called me back, and humiliated when I couldn’t answer any of his questions.

Lee: “Give me your elevator pitch.”
Me: “What’s an elevator pitch?”
Lee: “Give me your story in three minutes.”
Me: “It’s complicated. Can I have ten?”

After what I am sure for Lee was a very frustrating half-hour, he closed with, “I’m not taking you on, but I will help you out. Send me the manuscript and the contract and I’ll call back Monday with my best advice.”

Monday came with no word. Tuesday too. I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to pursue other agents so, on Wednesday, I planned to sign the contract. That morning, a one-line email arrived:

Don’t sign the contract. I’ll call tomorrow… Lee

The next day Lee offered to represent me. He sold Dear Mr. Knightley a couple months later to HarperCollins’ Thomas Nelson imprint, along with two subsequent novels.

A career begins: Katherine Reay and Julie Cantrell with their Carol Awards

There you go… My road to publication. And I did most things wrong… But that’s not even the best part. God doubled down on his love when he gave me Lee for an agent. Lee was one of the most Christ-like men I’ve ever known. In the year we worked together, before he died of cancer, Lee taught me not only how to navigate book writing and publishing, he modeled how to be more a gracious and considerate person.

And that’s what makes my journey to publication so extraordinary. On days when I get caught up in my own problems, irritations and little frustrations, I cast back to this time and I remember.

What’s the best thing about being published?

I won’t lie – it’s thrilling to see your book in print and to know readers enjoy it. It’s fun to share with readers when they write to you and to be a part of a wonderful world of books.

The Austen Escape:  After years of following her best friend’s lead, Mary Davies finds a whimsical trip back to Austen’s Regency England paves the way towards her best future.  

What’s a not so good thing about being published?

While it’s delightful to see your book out in the world, it’s also a very vulnerable position -- not everyone will enjoy it and not every reviewer will be kind. That’s a reality of putting anything out there and fiction is no exception. So each and every day I must remember why I write and let the chaos of publishing, social media chatter, reviews and comparisons fade away and get my job done.

Thanks so much for asking me to be here today. And please find me on social media. I’m always out and about on FB, Twitter, Instagram and on my own website, www.katherinereay.com. 

Katherine Reay is the award-winning author of Dear Mr. Knightley, Lizzy & Jane, The Bronte Plot (an ALA Notable Book Award Finalist), and A Portrait of Emily Price, which released in November 2016 with Starred Reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and a Romantic Times TOP PICK!

The Austen Escape releases November 7, 2017.

All Katherine’s novels are contemporary stories with a bit of classical flair. She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University and is a wife, mother, rehabbing runner, former marketer, and avid chocolate consumer. 

After living all across the country and a few stops in Europe, Katherine now happily resides outside Chicago, IL.

Connect: www.katherinereay.com

Books: Amazon Author Page

FRUSTRATED? WHY? It's all so easy.

Yes, occasionally / mostly / often, we writers possess this attitude, sometimes with a vengeance!

Literary agent Rachelle Gardiner received some interesting comments from readers of her blog. They follow:

1. Frustrated at finding the right audience.
2. Frustrated with the marketing side of it. To her it feels so much like a waste of time when she'd rather be writing.
3. One had two agents answering her query saying it was great, but they'd pass.
4.One multi-published author had six different manuscripts out to publishers who asked to see them......several months ago! And still no word.
5. One very frustrated fellow said genres have become restrictive requiring square peg stories to be hammered into round genre holes! He wanted to be able to read a story that sweeps across the literary landscape going wherever the story takes it. Umm, a little like the frustrated author in the cartoon?

What frustrates you most about the whole rigmarole of writing the book, finding an agent, sending in the proposal, then having to market the book you know the whole world wants to read? Aargh!!!
But we are writing faith-based fiction aren't we? 
The following encouragement is from Karen Ball of the Steve Laube Agency:

A woman went to visit her mother, telling her how discouraged she was, how weary of all the struggles in life. The mother took her into the kitchen, set three pots of water on the stove, turned the heat on high. In one pot she put carrots; in the second, she put an egg, in the last, coffee grounds. After about 20 minutes, she turned off the heat, fished out the carrot and the egg, and asked her daughter to what changes had taken place.
“The carrot’s all soft and squishy,” the daughter said, “and the egg is hard boiled.”
The mother then poured the water from the coffee grounds into a mug, and had her daughter sip it.
“What change has taken place?”
The daughter smiled. “The water’s been changed into a delicious coffee.”
The mother put her arm around her daughter. “So then, we have a choice when the heat is on in life. We can grow soft and squishy, like the carrot, or hard inside like the egg. Or we can be like the coffee grounds, and change the water around us into something rich and refreshing.”
Let’s give that a try, friends. Let’s let God use the hard times, the discouragements and frustrations, to refine and perfect us. 

* Rita Stella Galieh, author of two published full length novels, is learning to overcome frustration in her attempts at finding comparable books in a requested proposal. Does anyone else find that an easy task? Apart from ACFW's Fiction Finder and AMAZON, where else can you find such things?