There are two authors whose books I don’t understand why I love. One is Lee Child (macho, emotionally-repressed hero, with no sense of family and a knowledge of all things mechanical), and #2 appears here on Suspense Your Disbelief today. Tim Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series introduces the reader to a world that is a bit foreign for my usual tastes (I take my suspense set where I might actually experience it), and has a level of seediness and grit that, while utterly authentic, could make me want to avert my eyes. Yet Tim is too gifted an author to let me do that, and his series is too compelling. The fourth book launches today. Congratulations, Tim! Let’s raise a cyber glass of champagne and celebrate your success.

Or has he truly succeeded yet? Tim tells us below.

Let’s see. The moment I knew I’d made it. Have I made it?

If I have, nobody’s told me about it. I haven’t made it in terms of huge sales and books weighing down the shelves in every airport and twelve-figure advances and getting tanned from fame’s spotlight. I haven’t made it in the sense that I’ve written a book I’m completely happy with. And I certainly I haven’t made it if “making it” means that I’m past the point where every single book threatens to collapse on me for months before I finally see the way out.

There’s no actual index on which I can say confidently that I’ve made it.

But there are times when I go, “Ooookaaaaayyyyyyyy.” And, for the purposes of this piece, those will have to count.

For example:

· I wrote twelve published novels (eight of them under my own name) before I had the courage to write two women in a room together with no men present. I don’t know exactly what I was afraid of – women calling each other and reading the scene aloud while laughing hysterically, or what. But I finally wrote it. And in the upcoming Poke Rafferty book, THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, I have a 40,000-word central section that’s almost all woman. And I like it, and so do my wife and my female editor. So that’s an okay.

· In the first Rafferty book, A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, I wrote an edgy street kid who nicknamed himself, out of sheer wish-fulfillment, Superman. I gave him an equivocal ending in that book. I received, via my website, almost four hundred e-mails from people who either wanted to strip my skin off for not giving him a better fate, or asked how he was. I brought him back in a later book just to ease everyone’s mind. That felt amazing. People really cared about that kid. That’s definitely okay.

· Once in a very great while I open one of the books at random to see what’s in there and come across a line I really like – for example, “Through the sliding glass door, Bangkok glittered with the fraudulent optimism of all big cities.” And I think, huh. I wrote that. That counts.

· At about four-fifths of the way through the writing and publishing process, a box arrives on my front porch containing 15 or 20 ARCs – advance readers’ copies, bound galleys, with the actual type and the real, almost final cover. These actually mean more to me than getting the first editions. It’s the first time I’ve seen that particular 12 or 14 months’ worth of managed daydream packaged into an actual slab of physical stuff. The ARCs for THE QUEEN OF PATPONG came yesterday, and just to make things perfect, I opened it to a line I liked.

· Over twenty years or so, I’ve learned one, and exactly one, valuable lesson about writing, and that’s to do it. To do it every single day with whatever energy I have, whether it’s a lot or a little, whether the energy feels creative or toxic. To make story and listen to my characters even if those are the last things on earth I want to do. To understand that not wanting to write means that it’s absolutely essential that I do. To realize that writing is like a relationship, like a religion, like a child: it demands a non-negotiable commitment, a shrine of time, an investment of energy and emotion and intellect and all the other things we sometimes want to keep for ourselves. And I’ve learned that if I don’t do all those things, I fail, but if I do them, I eventually have a book.

So that’s probably the answer to the question: I feel like I’ve made it, at least on a personal level, every time I finish a book. And I guess I’ll settle for that.

Timothy Hallinan has written ten novels, all thrillers, and one book of nonfiction. For almost thirty years he operated one of America’s leading television consulting firms. He has written full-time since 2006. Hallinan divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, the setting for his Poke Rafferty novels. Visit Tim at http://www.timothyhallinan.com and watch the book trailer for QUEEN OF PATPONG here: www.youtube.com/shadoestevens.

First, I’d like to say that I was thrilled to be asked to write this piece, as this topic is something I’ve been puzzling over for a long time. I have no idea whether I’ve made it or not. If I have, I don’t know when I did. If I haven’t, I don’t know if I will, and if I do at some future date, I’m sure I won’t know when it happens. I regard the whole issue as an intriguing mystery, and I am constantly searching for clues that might point me in one direction or the other. After all, like everyone else, I am forever hearing that hardly any writers make it, whatever ‘it’ is, so it seems quite important for a writer to know whether she has made it or not. When my first psychological thriller ‘Little Face’ was accepted for publication, that was probably my happiest moment as a writer, the moment when I most felt, ‘Hooray! I’ve succeeded!’ Of course, I quickly realised (indeed, I probably knew all along, though blissful denial obliterated the knowledge for a few days) that I’d succeeded only in securing for myself the opportunity to fail. So many published books wither and die without being noticed, and that might well happen to mine. Why wouldn’t it, in fact? There are so many books out there – why would anyone notice mine? And my publishers told me not to worry if ‘Little Face’ didn’t become a bestseller, as it almost definitely wouldn’t – they would build me up gradually. This sounded great to me – it was their way of telling me that they loved my writing and would stick with me and believe in me even though sales weren’t going to be much to write home about. At that point, things seemed clearly defined: I hadn’t made it, and probably wouldn’t for quite a long time, but my publishers and my agent and I would slog away together, hoping for the best.

‘Little Face’ was published the following August, and, although it got amazing reviews, it didn’t sell very well at first – a few hundred to a thousand copies a week, I think it was, which was perfectly normal for a first thriller by an unknown writer (well, I was known as a poet, but that basically meant that four people in Hampstead had heard of me, and maybe two in Chiswick). Then something odd happened. On Boxing Day that year, disappointed with all the books people had bought me for Christmas (‘Do they know me at all? How could they possibly think I’d want to read that?’), I made my virtual way to Amazon.co.uk, planning to look at the Crime & Thrillers chart and order some ace crime novels. Bizarrely, my non-bestselling novel ‘Little Face’ – which I’d been told by many book trade experts was too subtle and well-written to be a commercial success – was at number one. Numbers two, three and four were by John Grisham, Thomas Harris and someone else hugely famous and multi-millionairish that I can’t remember offhand – Ian Rankin, perhaps, or God. In shock, I looked at the Amazon Fiction Chart. ‘Little Face’ was number one there too. I assumed my husband was playing a trick on me, but couldn’t work out how he’d done it. At almost exactly that moment, my editor emailed to tell me I was number one on Amazon. From that moment, the sales of the book took off, and it soon came to be known as a word-of-mouth bestseller (or a ‘bestseller de passaparola’ in Italy, or a ‘bestseller boca-oreja’ in Spain). Pretty soon it was selling all over the world, and people started to refer to it as an international bestseller.

That was when I started to wonder about whether I’d made it or not. Did being number one on Amazon count as having made it? Or selling to eighteen foreign territories? No, surely not. At the time, I was living in a semi-detached house in Keighley, West Yorkshire – I was fairly sure John Grisham and Thomas Harris didn’t live in Keighley semis. And I didn’t have a chef or a full-time live-in house-tidier, two things I would certainly have had if I was a roaring success, since I love food but hate cooking, and love a tidy house but hate drudgery. Yet there I was, day after day, picking up other people’s socks and pants from the floor, stirring pesto sauce into pasta… Therefore, I couldn’t have made it – not yet. But people kept talking as if I had, and certainly there seemed to be a general assumption from that point onwards that my future books would sell as well as ‘Little Face’ and probably better – they would all become bestsellers. This seemed a rash assumption to me – I pointed out that my next book might not sell at all, and everyone laughed and said, ‘Oh, nonsense – of course it will.’ The strange thing was that the people who seemed so sure that all my books from then on would be bestsellers were the very same people who were equally sure that ‘Little Face’ wouldn’t be. So I went from thinking, ‘Hang on a minute – how do you know it won’t sell?’ to thinking, ‘Hang on a minute – how do you know it will sell?’ When I reminded everybody that my next thriller ‘Hurting Distance’ might not sell for all the same reasons that we feared ‘Little Face’ wouldn’t sell, the response was flat-out denial and a rewriting of history. ‘Oh, I always knew ‘Little Face’ would be a huge success,’ said someone who had encouraged me to send it to a tiny, unheard-of publisher on the grounds that ‘none of the big publishers will want it – it’s too unusual’. Suddenly (like in a film where everyone is scarily denying what the hero knows to be the truth – Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, for example) no one could remember ever having thought ‘Little Face’ would be any less popular and widely published than the Bible and Harry Potter put together. I experienced one of those ‘am I going mad?’ moments. Even my husband was in on the conspiracy. ‘Yeah,’ he said self-righteously, ‘No one really believed in it apart from us, did they?’ Us? I thought. Us? My husband’s exact words, before the book found a publisher, were, ‘Look, Soph – it might just be no good. You might be better off giving up on it.’

When my editor rang me last year to say that my fourth crime novel, ‘The Other Half Lives’, had got to number 2 in the national book chart, did I think, ‘Aha, that’s it, I’ve really made it now’? No. I was thrilled, obviously, but I also strongly suspected it had to be a fluke – all the other books must have been off sick that week. And I remembered my ex-agent (emphasis on the ‘ex’) saying to me, ‘For your own sake, give up on ‘Little Face’ and write something else – I honestly can’t imagine anyone wanting to read it’. I thought about the time (recently) when an event organiser said to me, ‘Thanks so much for doing this – we did ask Ian Rankin, but the trouble with really good, successful writers is that you never hear back from them.’ I thought about all the people who accost me at my events specifically to say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of you before today, never read one of your books, and only ended up here because it’s a compulsory part of my immersion in the witness protection programme.’ I also couldn’t help thinking of the woman from the Doncaster reading group who whispered in my ear, while hugging me, ‘I hated your book, but you seem like a lovely person.’ (Why, in such situations, does one never say, ‘Actually, you’ve got it the wrong way round: my book’s a fucking masterpiece. I, on the other hand, am an evil bitch.’) I suspect that rude insensitive people are just as rude and insensitive in their dealings with writers who have made it as with those who haven’t – which makes it hard, as a writer, to know which camp you’re in. I often find myself thinking, ‘If I were a famous writer, would I be being treated like this right now?’ Yes, I think I would – but I also would if I was an unknown writer.

Which, I think, raises an interesting point. Commercial success, while being financially very useful, is ultimately meaningless. Our needy egos constantly remind us that no amount of fame can stop us from feeling like worthless scumbags for a large proportion of the time, or stop other people from making endless significant contributions to the creation of that feeling within us. I reckon this is the universe’s way of reminding us that we need to look beyond the artificial uppers and downers in our lives – the chance events that big us up, like our new book getting a good chart position, and the chance events that squash us down, like getting a bad review from a withered old fu…. Oops, sorry, I was ignoring my own ‘looking beyond’ advice for a minute there. And it is important to look beyond what the world thinks and says about us, and to see who we truly are, which is unaffected by anybody’s opinion. Even if it’s impossible for us to do this, it’s important to try. In fact, the more impossible it is, the more important it is. Otherwise we might end up like those insane old famous-writer duffers who sell trillions of copies and whose books are adored the world over, but who grumble about other multi-millionaires selling four more copies than them, or stew about not being taken seriously by critics.

The other day, my sister sent me an email saying, ‘Pity about new Dan Brown book coming out in paperback this week – it’s going to stop ‘A Room Swept White’ [that's my new paperback] from getting to no. 1.’ I was baffled as to why she thought my book might get to number 1 even in the absence of Dan Brown, but if she thought it might then maybe it might. Except it wouldn’t, because Dan Brown would block it – the bastard!! I had a clear choice – it was a fork-in-the-road moment. Either I could become the sort of idiot who lamented her misfortune in not being able to top the book chart, or I could remain a reasonable human being and realise that to make something like that into a problem was as good as begging Fate to send you a real problem to deal with. Like reading on the backs of countless mediocre novels that the author is ‘the new Sophie Hannah’…now there’s a real problem…grrrr!!

Sophie Hannah is a bestselling crime fiction writer and poet. Her novels of psychological suspense have sold 500,000 copies in the UK, and are published in nineteen foreign countries.

Sophie’s fifth collection of poetry, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 TS Eliot Award, and in 2004 she won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her suspense story “The Octopus Nest”. Her poetry is studied at university.

Besides her psychological thrillers, Sophie has also written three other novels, even harder to characterize. Women’s fiction? Literary fiction? Yes to both.

She lives in Cambridge, England with her husband and two children.

That rejection due to death was the final punch to my pummeled self-esteem. Reeling, I stowed away the manuscript for Hemlock Lake and, lest I developed delusions of adequacy, filed all those rejections with it. Eventually, I moved on to other projects—first avoidance projects like gardening and then writing a few cozies on my own, co-authoring two mysteries and a fantasy with my husband.

But I am, as my father used to say, “as determined as a terrier at a rat hole.” So, after a few years when the numbness passed, I took another look at Hemlock Lake and found that I still believed in it, still wanted to see it in print. Without an agent, there was no way most major publishing houses would consider it, so I made a list of smaller presses and, after several weeks of procrastination, began querying.

Rejections still arrived, but they came more slowly than they had from agents. Six months might pass and I might allow myself the tiniest spark of hope before I’d get word that a publisher:

· already had sufficient titles in the pipeline

· was overloaded with current projects

· felt it wasn’t right at this time

· felt it wasn’t compatible with current editorial needs

· had recently changed its policy regarding manuscript submissions

· couldn’t connect with the story, setting, or character

· had discontinued the imprint I’d queried

· was feeling economic constraints

· wanted a large sum of money to “go into partnership” with me

Three years into this process, the pain of rejection turned to grim amusement. As I filed each letter, I joked that this process was as torturous as trying to get a date during my teen years. I measured my stack of rejections against the square footage of the office wall I planned to paper with them and noted that I still needed another four square feet. I told myself that I wouldn’t quit, not as long as I could lick an envelope or tap out an e-mail message and hit the “send” button.

Four times editors wrote to say they liked Hemlock Lake and were moving it on to the next level for further consideration. Twice it was put on extended hold because of economic considerations and once it went into terminal limbo when the person considering it left the publishing house. Once it got glowing reviews from two rounds of readers before it hit a wall with the final editor.

I considered the validity of every comment I received about plot and characters, revised, and queried on, quoting Galaxy Quest, “never give up, never surrender.”

And then, in December of 2008, I got a different type of reply from Rosalind Greenberg at Five Star.

So hardened had I become to rejection that I was immune to accepting acceptance. This must be a joke, I thought. One of my soon-to-be-former friends is messing with me and has created a fictional publishing house.

Then I did a search and found that Five Star really existed. I called my long-suffering husband in to read the message. He assured me that it really contained the words, “I liked your novel so much . . .” and, “I would like to request approval to acquire your manuscript . . .”

In July of 2010, Five Star releases Hemlock Lake.

I feel like I’ve piloted a ship across a vast ocean, through a hundred squalls and storms, past a dozen reefs, around a whirlpool, and through a rocky channel. I’m grateful that I made it and proud that I kept faith with my characters and myself.

Will readers like Hemlock Lake? I don’t know. I hope so. When I’m not at work on the sequel, I have my fingers crossed.

Carolyn J. Rose grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She has published a number of mysteries and lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband, radio air personality Mike Phillips, and a motley collection of pets. Her hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking. Surf to www.deadlyduomysteries.com for more information. And watch the book trailer for HEMLOCK LAKE at http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/10179/Hemlock-Lake

With an innocent sense of optimism about its future, I began writing Hemlock Lake in 1999. Had I known it would be such a “hard luck” book, I might have taken a hammer to my keyboard, turned my monitor into modern art, and embarked on a career creating something easier to sell, like broken umbrellas or failing dot.com stock. But I didn’t have a crystal ball then—still don’t—so I forged on with a story that, from the start, felt like it wanted me to write it.

Confident about my first 100 pages, I sent a few chapters to a friend. They returned with gallons of green ink flowing between the lines and into the margins. If I’d laid the pages out on the ground, they might have been designated a wetland.

I’m sad to say that I didn’t handle the situation like an adult. Although I told myself that criticism is subjective and there was nothing vindictive about comments that I had solicited, I raged about the house repeating that she, “just didn’t get it,” and, “wasn’t much of a friend.” My husband, meanwhile, cowered in an upstairs room checking for an expiration date on our marriage license. Eventually I slammed the manuscript into a box (we were in the process of moving from Portland to Vancouver at the time) and ignored it for several months.

When the small TV station I worked for folded its tent and laid me off, I had time on my hands to consider her comments once more. But, practicing avoidance is one of my hobbies, so I painted the interior of our house, changed out the electrical sockets, and organized the garage before I unearthed the manuscript.

Time had given me emotional distance and I found that her comments weren’t as cutting or extreme as I’d first thought. In fact, most of them pointed to the need for material that had never made it onto the pages I’d sent her—descriptions and character details I’d carried in my head but never got down on paper because they were so obvious to me.

With a sense of mission, I went back to the keyboard, revised, and took second place in the 2000 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Competition and was a finalist in the Colorado Gold Competition. Emboldened, I began a search for agents. I soon found that no one wanted to touch Hemlock Lake for a variety of reasons, most of which will be familiar to any writer who has ever sent out queries:

· client list was full
· didn’t feel committed to the project
· couldn’t relate to rural setting
· couldn’t successfully market it
· had found editors were intent on potential mega-hit novels
· wasn’t wild about the premise
· was transitioning to a film management agency
· enthusiasm just not great enough
· not completely confident about this endeavor
· overbooked at present
· wanted a hefty fee for representation costs

And then I received the ultimate rejection: “agent has passed away.”

I remember opening that letter and dropping into a chair in stunned silence. Would someone rather die than represent this book? Was Hemlock Lake destined to spend the rest of my life in a box at the back of the closet under the stairs?

Stay tuned for part two…

Carolyn J. Rose grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She has published a number of mysteries and lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband, radio air personality Mike Phillips, and a motley collection of pets. Her hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking. Surf to www.deadlyduomysteries.com for more information. And watch the book trailer for HEMLOCK LAKE at http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/10179/Hemlock-Lake

I’ve been writing since my teens, so I suppose there’ve been a number of little “made it” moments. In college, I wrote a lot for the school newspaper. Then, after graduation, I worked in advertising, writing copy. It wasn’t until I moved from the east coast to LA that I began writing commercially. I tried my hand at everything–spec TV scripts, short stories, whatever–and, strangely enough, when I finally started to sell things, it all happened at once. The same year I started work on the ABC-TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, I also sold my first mystery short story to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and my first novel (City Wars, a sci-fi thriller) to Bantam.

So I guess that was the year that I finally felt I’d “made it” as a writer. That I could earn a living doing it. For most writers, however, I believe career success is more like a series of plateaus reached than some one, finite “moment.” For example, despite my years as a TV sitcom writer, I had another “made it” moment when my first feature film My Favorite Year, co-written with Norman Steinberg) was released.

Now, years later, as a psychotherapist who’s long retired from show business, my latest “made it” moment occurred when Poisoned Pen Press accepted my first crime novel, Mirror Image. The first in a new series featuring psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, I’m especially pleased because it’s set in Pittsburgh, my home town. So perhaps Thomas Wolfe was wrong: you can go home again, at least in fiction!

Now I’m curious to see where my imagination will lead me next. As well as what my next “made it” moment will feel like.

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out (John Wiley). His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). Mirror Image, due out in August from Poisoned Pen Press, is his first crime novel.

I was very pleased when author Carl Brookins wrote me because I’ve long enjoyed his posts on listservs such as the great DorothyL. Carl always has an interesting, no-nonsense viewpoint, and his approach to making it in this business reflects the same. Plus, Carl’s Moment brings in some ways the best thing of all–an undiscovered body of work yet to read!

It’s an interesting question, Jenny.

I always knew I’d be a writer. Then I sold my first piece of writing. That was more than 60 years ago when I was in the seventh grade. I wrote a short story to submit to a pulp magazine that featured only western tales. I had never been west of the Missouri and had yet to discover Louis L’Amour or the other western writers, except for Jack London. But I did know the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Imagine my delight when the magazine sent me 50 cents for the story!

Writing, fiction and non-fiction has always been a major part of my life. In high school I discovered that writing essays was better for me than short answer or multiple-choice tests. Every job I’ve held since high school has included a writing component of larger or lesser degree.

So, I’ve had many “made it” moments. One occurred when a piece I wrote on driving safety was published, without a word being changed, in the Triple A magazine. Another occurred when my first script for a televisions series I later produced was accepted for production. I knew I’d “made it” again when an international magazine aimed at professional broadcasters accepted my article on the founding and development of the tiny public television station in Fargo, North Dakota, a station I headed at the time.

My fiction writing career began when I made it as the author of “Inner Passages,” my first sailing adventure story, from Top Publications and again with my latest in that series, “Devils Island.” That novel is particularly satisfying because it represents the evolution of perhaps my strongest character, Mary Whitney, a bright, resourceful woman of charm and grace, with the athletic and mental skills to deal with her powerful but deranged ex-husband.

But you know, I’ll have the satisfaction again of having made it this far with the publication of my next novel or short story, or article. I’m a work in progress and I’m having a lot of fun getting there.

I’ve had many jobs, all related in some way to public communication. They include highway safety, public television, cable television and higher education. I love writing and almost everything that goes with it, including revising! I live in a suburb of the Twin Cities of Minnesota with my wife, a retired publisher. I’m a member of Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers, and Minnesota Crime Wave.

As a writer I felt I’d “made it” when I got a complimentary email from a woman I’d never met.

My story is like so many others. Being a writer was a lifelong dream of mine, but I didn’t approach it seriously until my three kids were all in school. Once the youngest went off to kindergarten, I kept a disciplined writing schedule, attended critique groups and workshops, and over the next seven years managed to write five novels, none of which were ever published.

When I discovered that manuscripts could be self-published as e-books on Amazon’s Kindle, I was intrigued by the idea. Initially, I uploaded two of my books, just to see how it went. I had no expectations, so when they started selling, I was thrilled. Still, without feedback, I didn’t know if anyone liked them, or even read them, for that matter.

A few weeks later, I got an email from a woman named Kimberly who lived in Las Vegas. The subject heading said, “YOU ARE HILARIOUS!!!!” Her email was as enthusiastic as her heading, and just as full of exclamation points. She loved my books, and wanted to know if I had others. I was overjoyed. I printed her email and read it over and over again, then made my husband read it (he was happy for me, but not nearly as emotional about it).

This was a turning point. Hearing that a complete stranger connected with my stories convinced me to upload my other books.

Since that day, I’ve heard from other readers, gotten some terrific reviews, and sold thousands of e-books. One of my novels, A Scattered Life, was optioned for film and will be published in paperback by AmazonEncore this coming August. There have been many validating moments, but Kimberly’s email was the first of these, and I still get a thrill thinking about it.

Karen McQuestion’s essays have appeared in Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. She is the author of six books self-published on Amazon’s Kindle, one of which, A Scattered Life, caught the attention of an L.A. based production company and became the first self-published Kindle book to be optioned for film. It will be published by AmazonEncore, Amazon’s new publishing division, on August 10, 2010. McQuestion lives with her family in Hartland, Wisconsin.

Some of you know about JA Konrath’s blog and his recent departure to points Kindle. (Or points Amazon.) In a week or so a commenter from JA’s blog will post a Moment here about her own forays into those uncharted waters–only she didn’t have JA’s platform and history of sales. But today we feature a Moment by an author who is exploring the same Kindle landscape. Read on, because I have a feeling there may be more of these on this blog as  the literary clime continues to evolve.

I’m not sure I feel as if I’ve made it yet. Writing is a journey and I’m evolving as I go. I used to dream of writing a children’s book and illustrating it. I loved to draw and paint. But I also wanted to join the military. So I chose the armed forces over college, I set up house and had kids. Then I homeschooled for a bit, but I still wanted to write.

While my kids were little, I read to them a lot. It stirred my passion again. I tried to write a picture book, but nothing really clicked. It wasn’t fun, and I struggled. I decided to give up. And I did. But I still yearned to write. I switched gears and wrote a few romances. My son got tired of never being able to read my stories, so I wrote a mystery for him. And it was good.

Now, I still write romances, and they’re where my heart is. I’ve seen my growth and my writing strengthen with every critique I’ve gotten. I cringe thinking about how many hours some writing friends of mine took just to teach me POV. The endless blue marks, line after line, have thinned out to a few here and there. My husband even enjoyed reading my latest romance manuscript I’m marketing.

I think for my mystery and YA writing, I’ll feel like I made it once I hold my story Pieces of the Star in my hand in graphic novel format. The combination of a good story, written for kids added with pictures, that will hit the dream spot and give me the, I achieved my goal, sigh.

Country girl born and raised, KJ Roberts has been writing for longer than she can remember. It’s a natural part of life to her. Indiana native, her stories are usually set in the Hoosier state. After a ten year stint in the military, she moved to Mississippi with her husband and two kids. She loves reading, listening to her son play guitar and watching her daughter dance.

Happy release day, Emily Winslow! Not only does Emily’s book look great–I’m off to buy it as soon as I get done posting this–but her Moment is full of enough thrills to make every writer tingle. Check out her psychological mystery, also guaranteed to deliver some tingles.

There’s a fantasy that the getting of an agent or book deal will be celebrated over lunch in a New York restaurant, with mutual toasts and a deferential waiter. The truth, though, is that many writers don’t meet their agents or editors in person. They work quite happily apart, sending manuscripts back and forth over mail or email, and hashing details out over the phone. New-York-area writers may get a meal, but it’s not the standard.

So I was pretty stoked that circumstances have allowed me to enjoy FOUR such milestones over the past two years.

I don’t live in NYC; in fact, I live in England! But I grew up close enough to New York that a friend and I would cut school once a year to catch a commuter train into the city for the day. I still have lots of close ties train-distance from Manhattan. So when I signed with my agent, marvelous Cameron McClure at the Donald Maass Agency, I was quick to point out that I’d be traveling for a family wedding soon, and would love to “pop into” the city to meet her. I took Amtrak from Rhode Island, just like my grandfather used to for work. Normally, when someone else is paying, I try to order with restraint. But I felt so celebratory that I bookended the entree with appetizer AND dessert. The restaurant had a bustling business-y atmosphere, and the sink in the bathroom was filled with lovely, smooth river stones.

She sold my book a few months later, and a couple months after that both she and the editor who bought it headed to the London Book Fair. I live nearby, so that was chance number 2. We met at Bibendum, a fancy London restaurant. It has a unique stained glass window of, of all things, the Michelin Man. Hilarious stories of misbehaving authors were shared without naming names. Plans for future books were discussed. I skipped appetizer, but got dessert again.

About eight months later, I was in New England again, for family and business reasons. I volunteered to catch the train from Boston to meet the editor who would be editing my book (he works under the acquisitions editor I met in London). I assume that what they set up was done so for efficiency but to me it seemed the peak of luxury: eating in a private dining room in the Random House building. It was pretty much a meeting room with a waiter thrown in. The waiter was so formal and intimidating that I could only nod whenever he asked me if I was finished with a course, whether I was really done or not. It turned out that both my editor and I had been theater majors in college. We got along great.

The most recent lunch came at the transition between the editing phase and the publicity phase. I wanted the chance to meet my publicist, and make a good personal impression. I had no nearby obligations as an excuse to “drop in,” so this time I had to make a dedicated effort to get there. My husband travels a lot for business, so I was able to make use of all those accumulated air miles to travel from England for free. The most amazing thing? THERE WAS A SPECIAL OFFER ON THAT ALLOWED ME TO TRAVEL INTERNATIONAL FIRST CLASS. Apologies for the all-caps, but you have to understand–I have never even SEEN the inside of a proper first class cabin. They have these sort of personal pods where you can lie all the way down, or you can swivel your seat to face a desk, and you have a pop-up TV screen with a ton of recorded shows, and they just keeping bringing you food and alcohol for basically the entire flight. Wow.

This time we went to a Greek restaurant, with a large group: agent, editor, acquiring editor, and publicist. I handed out presents, including a lovely winter scarf for my editor. He wrote me a thank-you note weeks later, signing it with a stick-figure drawing of himself, scarf billowing behind, and my book in his hands. He drew a huge smile on his face. I keep that note as a bookmark. That’s my “made it moment.”

Bio: Emily Winslow is an American living in Cambridge, England, where her debut novel THE WHOLE WORLD is set.

I am very glad to feature Lois’ Moment  because not only does she elaborate on an oft-appearing theme–the fact that your definition of making it changes as you in fact do make it–but she also has both feet–and one more besides–in some very interesting worlds in addition to writing.

When Jenny asked me to write a blog on “How I Knew I Made It,” my first thought was, “Define it.” Did I make it after I sold my first book? Lots of authors sell one book and never sell another, winding up as one of those {shudder} One-Book-Wonders. No, I definitely didn’t feel like I made it after selling my first book. However, for some authors selling one book would be enough for them to feel they’d made it. For others,it comes after the second book. Still others, not until they’ve signed that first multi-book contract. Or their first 6-figure advance. Or hitting a national list for the first time.Or being able to kiss that dreadful day job good-bye.

Making it means different things to different writers. For me, making it happened the day my agent told me she thought I was funnier than Author X. And no, I’m not going to tell you who Author X is. This was one person’s opinion and one person only. Author X happens to be one of my favorite authors. She’s definitely made it; she has the fame, fortune, and awards to prove it. I, on the other hand, will most likely never reach the pinnacles of success she has reached. Few authors do. However, being compared to her and coming out on top made my day that day and saw me through a long dry spell when no other editor seemed to feel the same way about my writing.

So to me, making it was the day that I realized a compliment from the right person could mean as much as a contract. It kept me writing, and eventually that multi-book contract arrived. Maybe someday I’ll see that 6-figure advance and my name on the NY Times list. Meanwhile, I never forget that at least one person, and now maybe more, believes I’m funnier than Author X.

Lois Winston straddles three worlds and is a long way from giving up her day jobs. She’s both an associate with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency and an award-winning author of romantic suspense and humorous women’s fiction. Lois is also an award-winning designer of needlework and crafts projects. In January 2011 Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series will debut. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers (http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/)