You'd never be able to compare the feeling I had two days ago when, on a last email check, I saw something drop into my inbox. Something I was sure would be a "we regret to tell you". Like I've had from agents since my first tentative submission attempts all the way back in 2011. But it wasn't.
It was a pitch I had no idea would work. I'd needed to withdraw and rewrite it once because my overexcited fingers had attached the wrong documents and made some rather glaring spelling and word mistakes. It was the first time I'd put together what was basically a pitch selling myself and the many different series and standalone titles I could offer them over so many years at such and such a pace...
That was just over a month ago. And when I saw that email and read it, I couldn't believe my eyes. I read it again. My desk faces the window, and since it was dark outside it acted as a mirror. I was gawking like an idiot. Then I leapt up from the chair and started dancing about the house like a sentient pogo stick, bouncing round and round in circles as if I were an overexcited child. I wanted to shout, to tell the world, to exalt my good fortune from the rooftops. But the most startling emotion I felt wasn't excitement. It was a pure, unfiltered happiness that I hadn't felt in years. The pressure, the anxiety I'd felt with each submission....gone. Thirteen years of effort finally paid off.
I don't want to mention too much at this point, because it's still very early in the process and I'm awaiting a contract. And there's still a long road ahead filled with difficulties and the grind of any fledgling author establishing a market presence. But it's a start, and with a publisher I could only have dreamt of.
I have a publisher. Now the real work begins.
