Tuesday, April 4th, 2006
Congrats to everyone!
Archive for April, 2006
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006
RWA has a little bit in their email newsletter about second sales–listing them that is. Why you ask? Because contrary to what a lot of aspiring writers think–the second sale (contract) is not a sure thing. I and many of my friends are bobbing around in this limbo ourselves right now.
With that in mind I wanted to post a 
few second sale stories here on my blog. Only, one kind soul has shared hers with me so far, but I’ll try and dig up some more. So, here is the first in what I hope will be more second sales stories.
Gail Dayton has had four books published–two with Silhouette Desire and two with Harlequin’s Luna line. A rather interesting hop from Desire to Luna, and Gail was kind enough to tell me how it happened.
–From Gail–
I can not only give you a second sale story, but a third…sort of.
Okay, my first sale was to Desire. I sent a partial in January of 2000, sent the complete in March, and they bought it on May 31. Wow! So of course, I thought I had it made. Problem was, this was the 1st Desire I’d written–I’d been all over the place in my writing (still am)–so I had Nothing under the bed to follow up with. I tried a couple of things and got shot down. Then my editor went out on maternity leave.
It took a while to get an interim editor, and about the time my original editor was about to return to work, 9/11 happened. (My sheikh book was released that November–sales weren’t great, but they weren’t bad either.) So the editor decided Not to come back. And it took another couple of months for the interim editor to be confirmed as my new official one. 
Then H/S New York moved their offices, so nothing happened for another month or so. By this time, it was 2002, and I had sent in a
rich girl/poor boy story (about the 4th ms I’d tried). But poor boys weren’t doing well, so they turned it down, and I asked if they thought it would work if I made him rich. One major re-write later, they bought the book. 
Two years after my first sale. It came out in 2003.
About this time, Harlequin underwent their major reshuffle, moving editors to new lines, promoting them, re-arranging them, etc., etc. And I was submitting new proposals for Desire and getting them shot down. All this time, I’d been hearing about this new fantasy line Harlequin was starting up: Luna.
Fantasy was my first love. I read fantasy back when I still thought kissing was icky, long, long before I discovered romance. So I watched, listened, and read the first few books that came out. Then I worked up a proposal for Luna. While waiting to hear about those Desire proposals I kept sending in. A year after my 2nd Desire sale, in August 2003, I got
a call from my editor: They loved my Luna proposal and wanted to contract for three books.
I still haven’t sold another Desire, despite continuing to submit proposals on a semi-regular basis. The Lunas do keep me busy, which I know is part of it. And the other part may be that, while I read a lot of Desires and they definitely have a place in my heart, that’s not where my head is any more. I think I’m going to focus on the fantasy and paranormal arena for a while…
Visit Gail on the web at www.gaildayton.com.
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
I’m using this tomorrow in my Romance Unleashed entry, but it’s cute enough to use twice, don’t you think?
