Back in July I was looking at Twitter one morning and saw a few of my friends tweeting #SFFPit pitches. (#SFFPit is a Twitter pitch contest specifically for science fiction and fantasy writers; agents and publishers scan the feed during the day and “like” any pitch\u00a0that intrigues them.)<\/p>\n
D\u2019oh. I\u2019d been taking a bit of a Twitter break and had no idea #SFFPit was coming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t think The Keeper of the Key<\/i>, the\u00a0MS I’d finished and had just started querying, was suitable for #SFFPit. But I happened to have a Notes file of pitches for Tidepool, <\/i>my Pitch Wars \u201917 dark fantasy novel, on my phone, all ready to go for such occasions. Just add hashtags!<\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t done any querying or pitching for Tidepool<\/i> for a while, but I figured why the hell not? I\u2019d told myself at the beginning of this year that I was going to pursue any and every opportunity that arose until something panned out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of my Tidepool<\/em> pitches got a like from Parliament House Press. I checked them out carefully and liked what I saw and read.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I still don\u2019t have an agent. I know that they\u2019re very important and I haven\u2019t given up on getting one, but after querying more than 50 agents with Tidepool<\/i> and getting several full requests and some positive comments but no offers of rep, I\u2019d decided to move on to querying my next manuscript,\u00a0The Keeper of the Key,<\/i> and submitting Tidepool<\/i> to small presses. Tidepool<\/i> wasn\u2019t doing anyone any good sitting on my hard drive year after year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And full disclosure: Every time I read Tidepool<\/em> over again, I thought “Goddamnit, this is a good book. It deserves a readership.”<\/p>\n So I sent Parliament House the requested material.\u00a0Parliament House\u2019s acquisitions editor pinged me back quickly, asking for the full. I knew enough by now to not get my hopes up, but I still felt excited as I sent her the manuscript. It had been a long time since I\u2019d had a full request for anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And that was that for a while. This was an unusually tumultuous summer with many ups and downs, so I had a lot of things competing for my brainspace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On a Wednesday night in mid-August, I saw a response from PH in my email.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve long since conditioned myself to expect a rejection when I see submission responses, so I took a deep breath and steeled myself. Great. Let\u2019s get this overwith.<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My eyes bounced all over the email, which was a little long, but finally landed on a sentence that at first I couldn\u2019t quite parse. Something about an offer to publish my work\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n