My Turn

Contract offer! These two words stared at me from the subject line of an e-mail which had just arrived from my literary agent. I’d known something was in the works, but the sight of those words on a message to me seemed incongruous.

Like many authors, I’d resigned myself to reality. Publishing had changed in recent years. The number of houses available to print manuscripts had shrunk to a handful and the number of writers with stories to publish had grown in monumental proportions. I’d had a couple of manuscripts make it to the publishing boards of various houses, only to have them turned down. The opportunities for my story to find a publishing home didn’t seem to exist.

This summer, though, through an odd twist of fate, my newest manuscript made it to the desk of a publisher my agent recommended. I’d submitted my novel through the early submission service of the writer’s conference I planned to attend. The editors I’d chosen to see the sample pages had filled their quotas, so I asked the woman coordinating the exchange of proposals to please submit the contemporary sample to this third editor. She agreed.

A week later, I received an email from the new editor. She was confused, she said, because she’d received a proposal letter for one story and the sample chapters for another. But, she said, what she saw in the letter had her very interested. Could I send the correct chapters?

I gasped. In the switching of editors, the coordinator must have confused the stories. What were the chances?

I complied with the request and the rest is history. I’d met the editor who believed in my story and wanted to publish it.

The entire experience showed me once again that God, our heavenly father, is in charge. When he ordains an event to happen and the time for that to occur, it will be done, no matter how clumsy we humans tend to be.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV) says: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own  understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

My path to publication is proof of that truth.

Next year my first novel, in a series of three, will release sometime in the fall of 2017 with Mountain Brook Ink publishers. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I’ve some books to write!