Chapter 2 : THE ROAD TO PUBLICATION

My children were small then, three under six years of age, and I was squeezing in writing time when I could find it. Usually, in the evenings after they were in bed. (Ah, to be so young again! ) Later, I wrote while holding down a full-time job. You do what you have to do. John Grisham rose at 4:00 a.m. to get in his stint of writing before going off to his law office. My second story, God's Special Gift, made the rounds for a time and finally sold to Home Life magazine in Nashville. It was about my grandmother, who died in a house fire when I was 15. Writing that story, albeit many years later, was very cathartic for me. And I got a bi-line. My work soon found its way into the now defunct, (unfortunate, because it was a fine magazine) Atlantic Advocate, both fiction and non-fiction, and various other magazines and newspapers. Pregnant with my fourth child, I determined to pursue my lifelong dream of writing a novel. That summer, I sat on our back deck and read a stack of suspense novels of the sort I wanted to write. I reread Poe, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson and many of the new authors who were also becoming my favorites. In the fall, I began writing my own suspense novel, The Strawman. (Later Zebra Books would change the title to Listen to the Shadows.) I wrote it at our kitchen table in longhand, and the book took a long time to write. I worked on it off and on over a period of maybe four years. Finally the novel was finished. I'd already gone through my Writer's Market, as well as checking out the books on the shelves of our local bookstore, and Zebra seemed right for The Strawman. I sent it off. It came flying back within a few weeks, but the attached slip of paper wasn't quite a rejection. Anne Lafarge, acquisitions editor at the time, had scribbled a note saying she liked the book, but it was too short. They needed 100,000 words; mine was about 75,000 words. I settled down to work. It took another four months to add the other 25,000 words, which I did by weaving in a couple of subplots. In November I sent the manuscript off again, addressing it to Anne LaFarge. On the outside of the package, in bold black marker, I printed: Requested Material, just in case she forgot me, which I'm sure she did. One day in February the phone rang. I knew intuitively that it was Zebra. They wanted to publish The Strawman. When my husband came home that night I was at the stove cooking spaghetti. He took one look at my face, and said, "You sold your book." It was a dream come true. I felt weepy and humbled. And very happy