A Funny Thing Happened Along the Way to Publishing
by Angela Brown
You see, I had this awesome story. Okay, so it was very awesome to me (still is!) It was a Hunger Games inspired kind of thing following the selection theme. No kids killing each other (I know that’s the part everyone squees over but it sorta made my stomach turn over a few times at the inhumanity of it all…and yes, I LURVE THG!)
For my novel, I pulled in urban fantasy elements of vampires, the fae and a couple other undead in my dystopian corner of the world. Of course, I had to have a friends-to-lovers element.
While I was revising it, editing it and losing lots of sleep behind this story, the 2012 A to Z Blogging Challenge was coming up. I wanted to do a theme for it and had been obsessing – erm – enjoying Adele’s “Set fire to the rain” on serious repeat in my car. I think my daughter even got a chance to memorize the lyrics lol! Thoughts of secrets and hell swirled around in my mind, giving birth to a pair of damaged teens hiding secrets from each other though deeply in love with one another.
What started as daily posts for the challenge grew and took a life of its own, becoming the Abby and Basil blog opera. Readers left wonderfully encouraging comments, even to the point of asking when the novel would be published.
Uh…published?
A novel?
No, um, see, I got this other story that I’m working on that you guys are going to love once I go through tons of rejection from agents and publishers, luck up on an agent that loves the story as much as I do, then get an editor that loves it and yeah…then you’ll get THAT published novel.
But Abby and Basil refused to be denied. By the end of the blogging challenge, a novel had been born, one I never planned, never knew was in me…one I chose to self-publish and call Neverlove.
See, that’s the funny thing that happened. The unexpected leaped in with a change of plans. By now, I expected to be in the middle of a tub of Rocky Road ice cream lamenting my umpteenth rejection for my YA urban fantasy dystopian, you know, paying my dues, earning my rejection stripes. Instead, a different story, Neverlove, is out in the world. A new series is started, one I’m thrilled to share with readers and hope readers will enjoy consuming as much as I enjoyed mixing heaven and hell, love and hate, good and evil, pain and healing into a recipe of YA paranormal with elements of romance and action woven throughout.
*Just as a note, I’m still going to try and get the other novel out. Got the tub of Rocky Road on standby to munch on behind the rejections.
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Genre – YA Paranormal Romance
Rating – PG13
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1 comments:
It's really nice to know a little more about the creative process of an author, inspiration, and how things may change along the way. Great post!
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