It’s with enormous pleasure that I can announce I’ve signed a contract with Tirgearr Publishing, for a historical romance involving a hot Highlander! This comes hot on the heels of the medieval romance I signed with Wild Rose Press in the summer.
Hence the London underground analogy. You wait for a train for ages, then two come at once.
In my case I heard the rails rattle a few times and even felt the ground rumble under my feet when I thought an offer was on the cards last year; but the train never arrived. My novel fell at the final stage of submission after a lot of editing, submitting and waiting. I was close to thinking I’d never secure a contract and chalked up 2017 as the “year of the no”. But in contrast, 2018 has turned out to be the “year of the yes”.
It’s a pitch party!
This latest contract arose from a twitter pitch party and was entirely unexpected, a bit like those elusive unicorns which you can only see when you’re not looking. I’ve occasionally taken part in twitter pitches, mainly to gauge whether I can summarise a 100k-word novel in 140 characters in an appealing fashion. This one, #pitdark, piqued my interest because of the dark theme. Better still, it listed dark romance as a category. The novel I pitched is quite dark – even my agent baulked at it – but I recognised a couple of the publishers on the pitch list so I thought I’d give it a try.
My pitches attracted a couple of likes but not from anyone I felt was a good fit, so I chalked it up as an experience and forgot about it. However, the next day, two of my tweets clocked a “like” from an editor from Tirgearr who I had no idea was watching the hashtag. I’ve heard good things about them so sent the novel in. I wasn’t expecting interest given that the novel wasn’t a 100% fit – something I confessed quite frankly in my covering note – so I forgot about it again!
Imagine my surprise when an e:mail came right out of the blue saying they liked it – more so because they were happy to discuss the fit and after some dialogue where we discussed how I could bring the novel into line a contract came whizzing over the ether!
The luck of the Irish?
I’m sure the Leprechauns were watching over me. Not only is Tirgearr based in Ireland, but they first made contact when I was at a conference in Dublin (the first time I’ve ever been to Ireland) and the name Emily Royal comes from my Irish grandmother.
Given that I’m all about romance, that sounds like a happily ever after to me!
So, my four big writerly lessons learned from 2018
1 Be patient. When the rails rattle, keep waiting – the train will come eventually
2 Give twitter pitches a go – they really do work!
3 Never give up. Good things happen when you least expect them
4 Never underestimate the luck of the Irish
Here’s to 2019 and a shedload of editing, sequels and book launches!
