RITA® Best First Books

Fiesta of Firsts: When I First got the 'Call'

Welcome to week six in the Fiesta of Firsts celebration. “What,” you ask, is a Fiesta of Firsts? I’ll have to start from the beginning. Every year, RWA^® receives roughly 2,000 novels for the annual RITA^® contest, the most prominent award given for romance fiction. Finalists are chosen from each category--contemporary, historical, erotic, paranormal, Young Adult, romantic suspense, and inspirational. There is a special award for the Best First Book published, one taken from each of the categories. It’s special because you can only be nominated for it once. All the authors who were nominated for the 2015 RITA Best First Book decided to get to know each other better before the RITA ceremony in New York City at the end of July (it’s like the Oscars…Black Tie and gowns!) And along the way, we thought it would be fun to share our “Firsts” with you. We are taking a turn each week talk about a different “First.”  

GIVEAWAY ALERT! Next Thursday, July 16^th, one lucky winner will be chosen from the comments below to win a signed copy of any one of my books (or a digital copy of your choice, if you prefer.) Did I tell you that To Scotland with Love is a double RITA Finalist, up for both the Best First Book and the Best Long Contemporary RITA awards?

SECOND, EVEN BIGGER GIVEWAY ALERT!! At the bottom of the post, you have the opportunity to enter using the Rafflecopter that includes a copy of EACH of our nominated books and a copy of one of our favorite books. That is FOURTEEN books to win! So make sure to enter the giveaway below!!!

If you have missed the other Fiesta of First posts so far, you can find them below:

Week 1 – Sonali Dev hosted First Romance Crush

Week 2 – Alyssa Alexander hosted First Favorite Scene

Week 3 – Elia Winters hosted First Kiss

Week 4 – Clara Kensie hosted First Page

Week 5—AE Jones hosted First Wanted to Write Romance

This Week’s First!

I asked the Firsts to tell us about the First Call. For those of us in publishing, there can be a variety of First Calls. Sometimes, it’s the first time you get a call from an agent who wants to represent you. Sometimes, it’s the call when you sell for the first time. And as you’ll see, sometimes, it’s something completely different altogether.

So here we go…

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Alyssa Alexander wrote:

Ah, The Call story. I love these! Mine occurred in 2012, while I was participating in National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is in November each year, and the goal is to write 50,000 words. Hefty goal! I had promised myself that if I reached 25,000 words, I would be rewarded with a night in the bathtub, including wine and a book. If I reached 50,000 words, I would buy a pair of really, really nice black leather boots. Well, as the month was winding down, I knew I wasn't going to make 50k, though I did get up to 30k and earned my night in the bathtub. Then, just a few days before the end, I got a call from my agent that I had sold two books to Berkley. There was, naturally, much squealing, crying, and hyperventilating. I immediately tried to call Mr. Alexander. I didn't reach him, so I tried one of my critique partners. (More squealing here). When I got off the phone with her, I tried Mr. Alexander a second time. No go, so I called another critique partner. (More squealing!). Then I tried Mr. Alexander again, and again nothing. So I called my third critique partner. (More--well, you get it.) After that, I tried calling and calling for oh, about an hour. Finally, when I did reach him, I was a mess! But he was properly excited and much chagrined that he was unavailable.

Best part? Mr. Alexander came home with some really, really nice boots that night to celebrate.

Of course, on the day of the RITA call, history repeated itself. I tried Mr. Alexander a few times, didn't reach him, and finally shouted at him via instant message something along the lines of: CALL ME! THIS IS JUST LIKE THE DAY I SOLD AND YOU DIDN'T PICK UP THE PHONE! He called immediately!

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Clara Kensie wrote:
I was at the local sports center for my daughter’s indoor soccer game, sitting on the bleachers in the middle of a crowd of cheering parents, when my agent (the lovely Laura Bradford) called. I couldn’t hear her, so I went to the empty, quiet locker room. The reception was bad in there and we got disconnected. I called her back at the same time she called me back, and it took us a few tries to connect again.

If that wasn’t bad enough, then an entire girls basketball team came in, laughing and chatting, running the water, flushing toilets, blasting the hand dryer, slamming locker doors. I left the locker room and found an empty activity room so Laura could finish telling me the details. A few minutes later, a karate class started in the next room, and once again, I could barely hear her over all the “hii-yaas!” I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. I was mortified by the entire unprofessional situation.

After we finally hung up, I went back to the soccer field and told my husband why my agent had called. That’s when it sunk in, when I said those words out loud: “Harlequin Teen wants to buy my books.” And that’s when I started crying. I still get choked up when I remember that moment (yes, I am blinking away tears right now).

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AE Jones wrote:

My call story is a little different…

In 2013 two very important things happened to me at the RWA National Conference. First, I won the Paranormal Romance Golden Heart for Mind Sweeper. Second, I attended several self-pub sessions with the likes of Liliana Hart and Courtney Milan. And as I listened to these incredibly talented and incredibly business-savvy women, a seed was planted in my brain. But I wasn’t fully committed yet because I had won the GH and wanted to see if that would help propel me down the traditional writing path.

In January of 2014 I sat with a contract in hand from a small publisher who had been wonderfully professional answering all of my questions. But as I stared at the words in front of me, it didn’t ‘feel’ right. It was a contract for the first book in my series with no guarantee that the next (which I had already written) would be picked up. And by this time the seed that had been planted in July had started to grow roots. So I sat down with my Dad who is my sounding board and I laid out my options. After I blathered on for a while he simply looked at me and said, “What is your gut telling you to do?”

“It’s telling me to self-publish.” And with that I made the initial leap of faith. And I felt like I did the day I got my GH call – butterflies and clammy hands – and yet a feeling of rightness also descended upon me. And even though it has been a LOT of hard work, it is the best decision I have made so far.

So instead of a call, I guess you could say I found my calling!

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Sonali Dev wrote:

After being rejected by every agent in North America, I decided to start submitting directly to editors I had requests from. I'd been saving my publisher requ ests like precious gems, hoping to get an agent first and by the time I sent my manuscript to Kensington it had been nine months since I'd received the request. So, when I got an email from the editor within days, I was sure it was a rejection, because I was absolutely certain there was no way the editor had read my manuscript so fast. And I was so incredibly heartbroken at the thought of being rejected again that I couldn't bring myself to open the email. I shut my laptop down and pretended to do something else until the hubby came home from work.

The moment he walked in he asked what was wrong (we've been married a while). When I told him I'd heard back from Kensington, he asked me what they'd said and I told him I didn't know because I hadn't opened the email. So, with his signature patience, and without any visible eyerolling, he booted up my laptop and opened up my email, as I hyperventilated in the background. 

His exact words were, 'I don't think this is a rejection.'

This of course could mean just about anything. So naturally I pushed him out of the way and finally read the email for myself. It was my editor telling me he was enjoying my book and asking me what else I had.

I had no idea what that meant but I sent him the synopsis of my other book at record speed. 

One would think the drama ended there. But no. I knew that offers are always made over the phone (thus, The Call, right?) So when the next email came I went through all those motions all over again. The shutting my laptop down, the sobbing, the shaking, the waiting for the hubby to read the email.

This time it really wasn't a rejection. It was a simple question: 'What is the best time to call you?'

I fell to the floor and sobbed.

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Elia Winters wrote:

Getting the call from my agent offering representation was probably the best day of my life. Okay, maybe it's second to my wedding, but I'm honestly not sure. I've wanted to be a published author since I was a little kid. In fact, I don't remember ever not wanting that. But like all journeys, my journey to publication was rocky. Last week I talked about how I'd queried other books before Purely Professional, but when I decided to query this particular book, I only had one agent in mind. Even though you're "supposed" to query multiple agents, I only queried Saritza Hernandez because I wanted her to represent me. When she wrote back and asked for the full manuscript, I was elated... and then I waited. Six weeks passed, which in the scheme of publishing is not very long, but it felt like forever. I was at school on my last period prep when I got an email that Saritza wanted to talk on the phone, and would I be available to talk later? I emailed back an emphatic yes, then clutched my phone like a lifeline and wandered around in a daze until the end of the school day. I have no idea how I made it home.

When she finally called, it was to offer representation. She said she loved the book and asked me about myself and what else I was working on. We talked for almost an hour and I didn't cry at all, which is a pretty big accomplishment considering how I felt. Then I hung up and screamed, all alone in the house, just completely losing my mind. My husband was away on business for the week, so I called him to share the great news, and then I took myself out to a fancy dinner and ordered champagne. Getting the call from Saritza was more exciting to me than when I finally got my first contract, because I knew that an agent meant the start of my career. 

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Natalie Meg Evans wrote:

My writing eureka moment isn’t so clear cut. My journey to publication was a thirty year one, full of near misses and disappointments, so it’s hard to pinpoint when I changed from being ‘a not-published writer’ to being ‘a writer who’s going to be published.’ 

All changed for me when I won the UK’s Harry Bowling prize. This prize was a beacon for mainstream writers like myself as it not only offered a cash prize but also the opportunity for the winner’s work to be read and assessed by a leading London agent. In other words, the bolted door I’d spent years rattling, might just sigh open of its own accord…

I entered the Harry Bowling competition in the summer of 2011, submitting the opening of a novel called A Dark Flowering. That September, while I was wrestling with other projects, an email popped up. A Dark Flowering was longlisted. Big yay!!  The following February 2012, I was at work. Our family business had gone kaput and I was working as a cleaner. Low pay, hard physical work scouring holiday chalets. They had to be done to an incredible standard for the beady-eyed owners, and were often horribly trashed by the vacationers. I once found somebody had widdled in the fridge salad drawer, but that’s a story for another time. I was wielding a mop, on the last lap of an eight-sleeper chalet, contemplating that I had another six-sleeper to do before I could go home when my mobile phone rang. Oddly, my phone never, ever got a signal in those chalets, but that morning it made an exception for the MBA Literary agency in London. I’d shortlisted for the Harry Bowling! I burbled my thanks and noted that I was to go to London for the ceremony where the winner would be announced. 

I won and A Dark Flowering ultimately became my debut novel The Dress Thief. That magical call when I had a mop in my hand will always be ‘the moment’ when I made the transition from being a cleaner who writes to a writer who (if she must) cleans! 

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Patience Griffin (that's me) wrote:

My ‘Call’ story happened on a day when I was passing a kidney stone…yes, I’ve had them pretty often over the past twenty-eight years. I like to think that I’m a pro at kidney stones, but this day was an exceptionally painful one. I had just gotten out of a warm bath, which helps, and was too wiped out to do more than crawl into bed. I’m usually pretty shaky after these episodes; I call it the kidney stone hangover. I didn’t even get dressed first. I was lying under a pile of blankets, buck-naked. That’s when the phone rang. It was my agent, telling me something about NAL/Penguin, but I wasn’t processing what she was saying. Several times, I asked her to repeat herself. I probably should’ve told her I wasn’t one-hundred percent with it (and I definitely didn’t share that I was naked.) When I hung up, her words started to sink in. I didn’t cry. I didn’t squeal. The only thing I could do was to be still for a few moments and offer up a prayer of thanks. Then I called PhD and told him the news. And stayed in a state of shock for at least a month. I didn’t want to tell anyone beyond my closest writing friend until I was sure it wasn’t some mistake, like my kidney stone hangovers had graduated to happy hallucinations, or that NAL/Penguin would change their mind. Luckily, the ‘call’ was real and I couldn’t be happier with my new career.

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And now...this Week's Spotlight: 
To Scotland with Love 
(received a Publishers Weekly *starred review)

Welcome to the charming Scottish seaside town of Gandiegow—where two people have returned home for different reasons, but to find the same thing.…

Caitriona Macleod gave up her career as an investigative reporter for the role of perfect wife. But after her husband is found dead in his mistress’s bed, a devastated Cait leaves Chicago for the birthplace she hasn’t seen since she was a child. She’s hoping to heal and to reconnect with her gran. The last thing she expects to find in Gandiegow is the Sexiest Man Alive! She just may have stumbled on the ticket to reigniting her career—if her heart doesn’t get in the way.

Graham Buchanan is a movie star with many secrets. A Gandiegow native, he frequently hides out in his hometown between films. He also has a son he’ll do anything to protect. But Cait Macleod is too damn appealing—even if she is a journalist.

Quilting with her gran and the other women of the village brings Cait a peace she hasn’t known in years. But if she turns in the story about Graham, Gandiegow will never forgive her for betraying one of its own. Should she suffer the consequences to resurrect her career? Or listen to her battered and bruised heart and give love another chance? 

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GIVEAWAYS...two ways to win:

Leave a comment at the bottom with a book recommendation and why we should read it. (I'm always looking for something wonderful.) Win either the choice of an ebook or paper copy of To Scotland with Love. The drawing will be Thursday, July 16th.

             Make sure to enter the Big Basket of Books giveaway below.

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