We’ve heard a lot from writers on the traditional/indie fence lately. The debate to my mind should be less of a debate and more of a weighing of the pros and cons of each deserving path. That’s what author Tilia Jacobs did, and with some very good reasons for deciding, she chose a path. I won’t steal her thunder by revealing what it was. But the reason I’m featuring Tilia is not simply because she has a good story, or because her reasoning on this question is sound. It’s not because we agree on a lot of things, because we actually disagree about a fair amount. For example, I’ve found traditional publishing to be very different from her experience with it (and no, that didn’t just give the whole thing away). The reason I’m sharing this piece is because Tilia has a simply great Moment. One that takes that indie/trad fence…and knocks it all to bits.

First off, I must thank Jenny for offering me this spot on her blog.  What a splendid, ongoing source of inspiration!

And now for that moment.

I wrote my book because I had a story stuck in my head and characters I took to bed with me every night.  I wrote it because I loved it.  Happily, I still do.

Even more happily, I am not the only one who feels this way.  When it was still a manuscript I sent it out to a flock of Beta readers who said lovely things like, “This was the only thing I could read for three days,” and “I called my mom in the middle to tell her how great it was,” and “I couldn’t put it down—my wife was yelling at me to do the things I usually do, like sleep.”

Then it won an award, and more people told me how exciting it was, and how the characters drew them in.  I basked; I beamed.

So when the twenty-sixth agent turned it down, I got a little cranky.

“This is stupid!” I fumed.  “By the time I get published, half my characters will be dead.”

My nine-year-old, always my biggest cheerleader, agreed with me.   He knows my secondary characters are old.

My “Aha!” moment came when I gave myself permission to indie pub.  Some might call it a “Duh” moment.  I won’t argue.

It took a while.  I had, alas, drunk freely of the traditional-publish Kool-Aid.  “Don’t do it,” people said.  “It’s the last refuge of the unpublishable writer.  You’ll torpedo your career.”

But.  William Blake, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, and many others self-published.

This, I thought, is not a bad club to be in.

Then I met several writers who had indie pubbed.  Not one regretted it.

“Aha!” I cried.  (Or perhaps, “Duh!”)  “I can do this too.”

The real joy set in when I realized that in the absence of an agent, an editor, and a traditional publisher, I was the last word on quality.  Being a Type A who doesn’t really want to turn her work over to a team of people who can edit mistakes into it (wish I were kidding about that), I embraced each moment of the indie pub process.  Formatting the book for print.  Working with an artist on the cover, and then the trailer.  Re-formatting for Kindle.  I was shocked at how much fun this was.  Getting my much-loved story ready for its publication date felt like helping a firstborn daughter dress for her debutante ball.

My proof copy arrived one evening just before dinner.  I opened the box and—

—and it was my book.  It wasn’t pages from my printer or a bound copy I had made up at Staples.  It wasn’t an image on my computer.  It was My Book, and it was in my hands and it was solid and real.  It was my work and love for the past several years.

I screamed.  My kids screamed.  Literary euphoria took over the house.

That night after dinner my nine-year-old said, “Mommy, I want to make dessert.”  Giggling, he retired to the kitchen where he very carefully spelled out the word “Author” on a plate with chocolate-covered raisins.

And that was the sweetest Moment of all.

Tilia Klebenov Jacobs has won numerous awards for her fiction and nonfiction writing. She is a judge in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and teaches writing in two prisons in Massachusetts. Tilia lives near Boston with her husband, two children, and two standard poodles. Tilia is the author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time, available at Amazon and select indie bookstores.

It’s not every day that I get to do two very special things. One, feature the Moment of a dear friend. And two, celebrate her release day right here on the blog! I met Judy Walters when we were both struggling to get published (Judy’s first Moment can be read here). Our dinners and lunches often included much head-scratching (and even hair-tearing) and yet they became some of the most pleasurable times for me along this writing road. In the end, or the beginning, as it may be more accurate to say, Judy and I wound up walking two very different paths. Yet our goals are the same. To tell stories that mean something to us, and that reach readers. I hope that you will become, as I am, a fan of Judy’s work. Her new book just out today should definitely set that in motion!

This is going to sound strange, but my Made it Moment is the day I fired my agent, about seven months ago.

This is not going to be a post about hating on traditional publishing. I have lots of traditionally published friends, like Jenny. They’ve found their way in this big, bad world of publishing, and they’re happy.

This is about finding my own way.

I was with my agent for four years.  She was with one of the biggest, most well-known literary agencies in New York.  She had a solid name herself – had worked in publishing, and then in movies, for years.  She was friends with some of the biggest editors in the industry. A simple phone call put my manuscript in their hands.

Yet she couldn’t sell my first manuscript.

My second manuscript was a lot stronger. This time we’d used a developmental editor.  My agent tried to sell it, but this time…let’s say her enthusiasm waned earlier in the process.  She wanted me to e-book it with her agency, in a new program they’d started for writers like me. After a while, I agreed to this.  And six months later, my book came out.

During that time, I was writing another book. I’d titled it The Opposite of Normal.  Again, I used a developmental editor, and I was really proud of this book. Felt really good about it.

My agent and I had never communicated very well, and at long last, with this special book, I realized I would not get what I wanted from her.  She didn’t have the same vision for this book as I did, or frankly, for my publishing career in general.  I was tired of spinning my wheels with her. So after four years of trying to work together, I let her go.

I thought about going to another agent. There are so many reputable, wonderful, solid agents out there. But the book was ready. It was ready now.   And I had already given up so much to try to publish traditionally. I wanted the control back.

So for the last six months or so, I’ve been on this great journey of doing it all by myself. I’ve loved most minutes of it – from choosing the cover to doing my own PR and marketing, from writing my own jacket copy to choosing my own conversion company for the Kindle files. (It’s coming out in both paperback and on Kindle.)  There have been minutes of despair and frustration, too – like trying to get the Kindle files to work, setting up my Amazon site, and learning how many people don’t consider an independent book a book worthy of reading.  But the deep satisfaction I have – my “other” Moment – is doing it all myself and being proud of the work I’ve done.

Judy Mollen Walters is the author of Child of Mine (2013) and The Opposite of Normal (February 11, 2014). She is the Stay-at-home mother of two teenage daughters, and lives with her family in New Jersey, where she is at work on her next novel.

All of you know how much I love winter books, so it may not come as a surprise when I say that Kitty Sewell’s Ice Trap was one of my favorite novels when I discovered it back in 2007. Getting to share Kitty’s Moment–and many of the ups and downs of her career that followed–is a real thrill for me. In the time between 2007 and now, there’s been an explosion here in the US and Kitty is a part of it. What explains our love affair with Scandinavian thriller writers? What do these books offer that intrigue and compel us so? I don’t have a precise answer for that, but I do have a recommendation. Order a copy of Kitty Sewell’s latest. Her heart-stopping chapters and sleek prose will give you some idea.

My “I made It” moment was drawn out over a heady few weeks, seven years ago, when all in one go I was taken on by an excellent London agent, had my debut novel ICE TRAP accepted by Simon & Schuster publishers, and was shortlisted for the Hay Festival Wales Book of the Year and the Crime writer Association’s New Blood Award. On the day, I won neither, but hey, the star-studded events were fabulous and I had my 15 minutes of fame. ICE TRAP went on to win International Book of the Month with Bertelsmann’s Media, BBC Radio People’s Choice, and a few other accolades.

I wrote ICE TRAP as a dissertation for an MA in Creative Writing. My only writing experience to date had been a weekly column that I had been churning out over a decade for a newspaper group. It was my expertise as a psychotherapist, not as a writer, that had precipitated this assignment. I had thought I was a fairly experienced writer as a result, but as soon as I dipped my pen to write fiction, I realized how wrong I was. I had a hell of a lot to learn. To top these challenges, English was actually my fourth language. My native Swedish had been replaced by, first Spanish as a result of moving to Spain in my early teens, then having quickly to learn German, as in Spain my parents placed me in a wholly German school. English was picked up from a weekly class in school, conversations with English and American friends, watching films, etc. At eighteen I emigrated to Canada, and then had good cause to perfect my English, but this was never in a classroom setting, so grammar and vocabulary was picked up along the way.

It was after the whirlwind of ICE TRAP, seeing it translated into some fifteen languages, and sold worldwide, that I began to realize that to stay on top, a novelist is only as good as her last novel (unless you are an absolute writer-superstar, in which case you can afford one or two flops). Somewhere I read of the dreaded concept “one book wonder” and saw how many novelists were shot down with the inevitable comparisons of subsequent novels with their best-selling debut. Predictably, my own second novel, BLOODPRINT, did not do as well as my first, though a lot more time, effort and skill went into it. Nevertheless it reached bestseller status in France and another few countries.

My third and latest psychological suspense novel, CLOUD FEVER, has been translated and sold in Europe over the last two years, and is now, after a major re-write, at last being published in English on Amazon and Kindle worldwide. I think it is the novel I most enjoyed writing and to myself, my best work so far.

I am just happy to be amongst the small number of novelist who can actually live, eat and pay the mortgage from the proceeds of their work. Just! Long may it last.

Kitty Sewell was born in Sweden and has lived in Spain, Canada, England and Wales. After running an estate agency in the frozen north of Canada she trained as a psychotherapist and then as a sculptor. Since 1991 she has written a popular agony column which is published in various newspapers around Britain. Her first book What Took You So Long is biographical and was published by Penguin in 1995. She loves adventure and travel and hitch-hiked around South America for a year in her late teens. She has done various long-haul motorcycling journeys, including a solo ride around Europe for her 50th Birthday. She is also a founder member of ‘Catwomen from Hell’, a Swansea motorcycling gang for women. Her debut novel Ice Trap (Simon & Schuster 2006) is set in Wales and the Canadian Arctic. It was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the year and for New Blood Crimewriters Award in 2006. Kitty is single and lives within her sculpture park in southern Spain.

This writing life can bring us into all sorts of unexpected places, including prison, as Wally Wood’s Moment shows. But Wally’s Moment also shows a great deal more. As writers we pursue our art and craft largely in isolation. Even if we’re lucky enough to be published, and people read our work, we don’t often know what effect it may be having. If a page is read in a forest, does the writer hear? Wally was given the opportunity for his words not only to wind up in someone’s hands, but also in their heart. He really changed somebody’s life. And in the end, isn’t that what all we storytellers hope to do?

Shortly after my wife and I moved into our house twenty years ago, the recently-opened men’s prison in town suffered a riot and an escape. These confirmed the worst fears of the townspeople, who’d fought the state over the prison. A number of prison staff—the chaplain, head of recreation, head of volunteer services, and several others—held an informational meeting at a local church to talk to residents about the situation. They said they would welcome volunteers to work with the prisoners. I volunteered.

As a former magazine reporter and editor and as someone who supports his fiction habit by ghostwriting business books, I developed and taught six writing units: fiction, journals poetry, articles, plays, letters. The students volunteered for the classes and they had to bring a piece of writing every night as a ticket of admission. No ticket (a barely-literate short paragraph was fine), no class. Miss a class and no certificate at the end of the six weeks.

Because I was never a teacher in a classroom, I hadn’t had the experience before of watching a student catch fire and begin to thrive—like watching a flower bloom in stop-action photography. Still, you never truly know what effect you’re having and prison conditions (no contact outside of class, no phone calls, abrupt transfers to another facility) make it even more difficult. You would like to think you’re making a difference, but you cannot know.

All this background sets a context for my Made it Moment. One of my students was doing a sentence for murder. He was released on parole a year ago and he spoke to a newspaper reporter. I happened across the article in which my student said he began to change his life in prison, attended substance abuse programs, enrolled in the college classes that were available, and exercised regularly, which helped him release negative energy.

But, writes the reporter, “his most important bit of therapy was when he enrolled in writing classes offered at the prison. He said that these classes were his ‘emotional release’ that allowed him to put his thoughts on paper. He said that it was the writing classes that truly ‘helped him get through.'”

Wally Wood—not related to the late comic book artist Wally Wood—has written two novels about love, loss, and relationships while making a living writing business books. A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, he has woven his lifelong love of Japan into both novels.

Wally got the idea for his debut novel, Getting Oriented: A Novel about Japan (2011), a few years after serving as a first-time tour guide for Americans vacationing in Japan. His second novel, The Girl in the Photo (2013), grew out of his experience rubbing shoulders with surgeons while stationed at an Army hospital in Japan after the end of the Korean War. The book follows the emotional journey of a middle-aged brother and sister as they mourn the death of their surgeon father and discover a romance he’d kept hidden for 50 years.

There have been almost 300 Moments authors, and while I have a vision someday of us all gathering over drinks, coffee, or ice cream sundaes, and talking about this writing life, for understandable reasons that party hasn’t happened yet. I have, however, had the joy of meeting some of the Momenters in person, and Terry Shames is one. Terry and I were both debut novelists at the same time–that’s a little like being new moms together–and we got to talk at Janet Rudolph’s fabulous Mystery Salon.

Then Terry’s novel came out.

You know that feeling when someone you like also turns out to be a wonderful writer? It’s like meeting on two plains. You’re kindred spirits in a whole new way. Terry’s mystery is garnering praise from too many outlets to mention here–author and reviewer Andrew McRae just suggested it as a contender for an Agatha award–and that’s reason enough to share her Moment. But if you read on, you’ll see there’s another reason, too, and that’s the change that occurs inside a writer, no matter how she makes it.

Thank you to my host, author Jenny Milchman, for asking me to write about what moment made me feel like I had finally arrived.

This morning I awoke to a fabulous review. It could easily be a “made it” moment, and I’ve had more of those moments in the past eight months than I could ever have imagined. But my real “made it” moment is a lot more mundane—even silly.

“I admire you so much,” people say to me. “You really persevered.” I smile and thank them. But you know what? Perseverance doesn’t begin to cover it. Add perseverance to commitment, drive, the ability to overcome disappointment again and again, stubbornness, the determination to continue to sharpen one’s craft, and the capacity to pretend that reality doesn’t exist, and you’ve got a good picture of what it takes for most people to find a publisher eager to turn their manuscript into a real, live book.

In the years that I’d been trying to get published, a new opportunity had flourished—self-publishing. Self-published authors had gained a lot of respect and many of them seemed happy with the control they had over their books–the cover, price, the “look,” and whether the book was physical or electronic. They were happy with the fact that they made more money per book than they would if they were traditionally published. But learning the ins and outs of self-publishing seemed like a steep learning curve. Learning to promote my book was a learning curve I couldn’t avoid—but I really wanted to avoid the daunting production part if I could. Still, I accumulated a file of information about self-publishing. I gave myself a deadline to find a publisher, and was determined after that time to publish my first book myself.

One month before my “drop dead” date, I got “the call” from my agent. I had imagined this call countless times, imagining myself squealing, dancing around, chattering. None of that happened. In fact, I felt numb as I listened and tried to comprehend what my agent was telling me—that a real, live publisher loved my book and wanted to publish it. I must have sounded rational on the phone, because my agent talked to me as if I were. I remember saying I was excited. But I don’t remember feeling excited. I remember feeling disbelief.

Here’s why I know that was my “made it moment”. As soon as I hung up the phone, I did something completely out of character for me: I walked upstairs to my bedroom, changed into dress-up clothes and put on makeup. It still makes me laugh to think that that was my reaction. After writing several books that came close but fell short; after considering giving up and needing pep talks from my friends to keep going; after enduring looks of pity from people who knew I was banging my hard, hard head against a hard, hard wall, I had gotten the call that said the wall had yielded before I did.

I looked in the mirror and faced my dress like someone who had changed—someone who had made it.

Terry Shames is the best-selling author of A Killing at Cotton Hill and The Last Death of Jack Harbin, Seventh Street Books. Her books are set in small-town Texas and feature ex-chief of police Samuel Craddock. Terry lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband and two rowdy terriers. She is Vice President of Norcal Sisters in Crime and on the board of MWA Norcal.

This Moment gets the distinction of being the most humble I’ve ever read. And yet, just as the best humor strikes at pain, in this humility is quite a lofty ambition. What happens when we cross that line from aspiring writer to professional? Whom do we become and how do we know we’ve become it? Erik Dewey found out in quite the smallest way–a moment, not a Moment. It could’ve been embarrassing even. But when it happened, Erik crossed that line to a new career…and found that he had made it.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I consider this my “made-it-moment,” but for me it happened when I received my first email from someone telling me why they wouldn’t buy my book.

I had written Mercenary Blues specifically to sell as an ebook. I uploaded files and filled out forms, waiting for that day when I could tell the world it could be purchased.

One section of the form asked for the book’s blurb. I had sketched out what I wanted to say so I quickly composed it on screen, clicked submit, and waited for Amazon to tell me all was good. In hindsight, I should have let someone else read over it first, but hey, lesson learned.

I got the email from Amazon and proceeded to tell the world about my new book. I’m co-host on a popular board game podcast, so they were the first group to hear the announcement. After posting the show, I went back to check and see if there were any reviews of the book (honest, I only check three or four times a day) when I noticed that in the very first sentence of my blurb I made a grammatical error. I used a possessive instead of a plural. Ugh.

No peril, I bring up the appropriate web form, make the correct change to the blurb and click submit. I get acknowledgment that the change will happen within 24 hours. I breathe a sigh of relief and hoped I dodged a bullet.

The next morning, I receive an email from a listener telling me that because of the grammar error in the blurb he would not be buying my book because he couldn’t be sure of the quality of grammar inside. Fair enough, even though you could preview the first five chapters online, it was his prerogative.

I drafted a reply that said how I felt like an idiot letting the mistake through and changed it quickly, but I understood how he felt and thanked him for being a listener. I thought such a note would disappoint me, but I realized that this guy held me to a higher standard, that as a professional author, I should know better (and I should). That is how I know I made it.

Erik Dewey hangs his shingle in the Green Country area of Oklahoma. He has written or contributed to over a dozen books and more than twenty magazine articles. In addition to writing novels, he is also a co-host of the On Board Games and OnRPGs podcasts and has way too many games in his house. He met his beautiful wife in a court-ordered defensive driving course and has been far better for it. Also on his website is the Big Book of Everything, a free PDF life organizer to document all of the important things someone would need to know about in the event of a death or catastrophic life event. He loves it when people read all the way to the end of his bio.

Every Made It Moment tells a story. The story of a book, of an industry that’s in continual flux, and ultimately of a writer. Some parts of Sally Wright’s story will be familiar to us–the near-successes, the hitches, the times it seems like it’s t-h-i-s close (but isn’t), and what happens after the happily-ever-after. But there are some unexpected elements in here as well, including the bucked death sentence. (As befits any good mystery). Read on to get a feel for what this business looked like a long time ago, and what an Edgar-nominated writer who has survived decided to do.

The Elusiveness of Made-It-Moments

Well, the first almost-made-it-moment was when an editor promised me a contract within a week for the first Ben Reese mystery, Publish And Perish. I waited four, and phoned, and his secretary told me to call him at home. He said he was on another call and would phone me back as soon as he got off. I waited four hours, and called again. He said he was on another call, but would call me back immediately.

He didn’t; his secretary did, and said he’d asked her to tell me that “he’d have to pass on the book” (which brought the word “wimp” rapidly to mind, and made me assume he hadn’t gotten Publish through his publishing committee).

My next semi-made-it-moment felt like a real one because I actually GOT a contract, and a modest advance, and spent a month doing revisions for the editor – before she told my then-agent that the publisher had decided to “get out of fiction altogether.”

Then, another editor, Rod Morris, at another house, who’d liked Publish And Perish but had had it turned down by his publishing committee, heard the book was available again, and asked my agent to resubmit. The former committee members were now gone, and Rod ended-up offering me a three book deal.

He was a wonderful editor whom I loved working with, and I felt incredible relief that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life unpublished. I’d started my first novel seventeen years before (which, along with a second, and a work of non-fiction, still haven’t been published), and seeing a book in print made me feel as though I wasn’t just a self-deluded fool.

When I sent a trade paper copy of Publish to a former-editor-of-a-writer-friend to ask marketing advice, she sent it to Joe Blades at Ballantine without mentioning it to me. He was known in NY as “Mr. Mystery” then, and two days later, he, much to my amazement, bought the mass market rights for all three books.

When Pursuit And Persuasion, the third Ben Reese mystery, had been out a few months (and I’d spent every cent of my advance paying a NY PR firm to get me reviews), I got home from the horse barn where of a friend of mine kept Max (the one-eyed horse in Watches Of The Night) for me, and saw the light blinking on my answering machine. I was freezing, filthy and covered with horse hair, and our only good rug was between me and the machine, but I walked over and pushed the play button, expecting it to be one of our post-college kids.

Doris Ann Norris, who calls herself the “thousand year old librarian” (and appears to have hung-out with every mystery writer in the last fifty years), had left me a message. “Congratulations! I just heard that Pursuit And Persuasion’s been nominated for an Edgar Alan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America!”

MWA called later and confirmed, but hearing Doris Ann’s message made my heart stick in my throat. That was the moment for me … since I’d first been published … since Ballantine bought the books … since Marilyn Stasio at the NY Times Review of Books had favorably reviewed Publish and Perish (my first book! of all things) as well as Pursuit And Persuasion.

And yet, the path wasn’t straight from there, even after the fourth Ben Reese came out. Editors – who think your fifth book’s the best, and intend to put real money behind you for the first time – get thwarted by company presidents and suddenly retire. Other publishers don’t want a new book when they don’t own the series backlist … and you end-up scrambling again, trying to find a publisher for the next two books.

This is an oft told tale. Which makes me ask, “What do we mean by ‘made it?’” I’m very grateful that I was published by the editors who published my six Ben Reese novels. I’m extremely glad I was nominated for an Edgar. But don’t we always want the next thing – the one we haven’t got?

I’ve been told three times in the last two years that I only have six months to live. I wrote a new mystery during that time about a woman architect in the early sixties in Kentucky horse country. It’s been the writing, the thinking, the work itself that’s mattered to me – much more than the hope of success, or the hope of praise, or any possible award. Breeding Ground – being able to work with the horse world in Lexington, to write about three family horse businesses fraught with family conflict, about caregiving, and discouragement too, and what can come out of suffering – actually being here to publish it myself, and begin to plan the next book – that’s what’s meant the most.

When I got discouraged (which I did fairly often) in the seventeen years before I was published, my husband would say, “A writer is someone who writes.” It’s getting to do the work, to write something that I think is worth writing about, that – excluding my faith and my family – is the gift I’m most grateful for every day I’m given.

Sally Wright is the author of six Ben Reese mysteries: Publish And Perish, Pride And Predator, Pursuit And Persuasion (a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award Finalist in 2001), Out Of The Ruins, Watches Of The Night (published in June 2008) and Code Of Silence, a prequel to the series (published in December 2008).

Wright was born obsessed with books, and started pecking-out florid adventure stories with obvious endings by the time she turned seven. She wrote and performed music in high school and college, earned a degree in oral interpretation of literature at Northwestern University, and then completed graduate work at the University of Washington. She published many biographical articles, including pieces on Malcolm Muggeridge and Nikolai Tolstoy, Leo’s grandnephew, before she wrote her Ben Reese books.

Reviewers compare Wright’s work to that of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh. Wright herself says that her literary influences range from all of those to Tolstoy and Jane Austen, from P.D. James to Dick Francis.

Only when I finally learned that I was going to be published, did I feel safe in admitting that my debut novel was actually the eighth one I’d written. Before that I felt lame about trying so hard without getting anywhere. I understood what made people hide things about themselves. They’re ashamed. So was I.

When I finally spoke up (my name is Jenny and I’ve written eight novels), I realized what many people who do who are finally able to admit the truth. We’re not alone. All around me, people were saying, “I wrote nine before I got published.” Or seven. Or twelve.

The author of this Moment could join me at a Writer’s Anonymous meeting. Her words brought back all the tedium and discouragement that lies along the breaking-in road. If you’re on it, please keep trudging. The sweet, shining moment at the next juncture will make it all worth it.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, penning my first stories as a very young girl, and then slowly getting more serious about the craft as I went through high school, college and  graduate school. The writing was always wonderful. It’s when I felt most alive, and the part I loved most.

Sometime after graduate school, I decided to get serious about publishing, something hopefully beyond the few short stories that had been picked up over the years. Writing was still fun, but I had a goal in mind now. So I set to work, writing novel after novel, trying with each to get published. I came very close with a few, but in the end, struck out.

Second Verse, my Young Adult romantic thriller, was my sixth novel written. I had been working on it for a few years and I felt better about this book than I had the others. This one felt like the one. So once again, I started to navigate the publishing waters.

Before long [ha! How easy to say that now that it’s over! After five failed novels and years of submitting and rejection, the wait was excruciating, I assure you], I had a few houses interested in Second Verse. When I spoke to the folks at my publisher, everything just clicked. I signed my contract with a huge smile on my face.

For me, the moment it first felt real was when I was at Book Expo America (BEA) in May of this year. I saw my advanced copies for the first time and got to sign books on the show floor. Although I’d been working toward this for a while and knew it was coming, that was the moment where the reality of it really hit home.

After that it was all a whirlwind. In the months following, ARCs began to go out to reviewers, things began to move quickly (and after years and years of slow and nothing, quick feels incredibly quick!) Reviews began to come in and things got set up for book launch – interviews, blog tours, events, appearances. It all felt so real!

Second Verse has been out for a few weeks now, and it’s been really fun. Lots of signings and events, and I’ve talked to some readers, which has been amazing. We also just found out that Second Verse won a 2013 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award. It won the Gold in its category: Young Adult Fiction – Horror/Mystery. That was really exciting for me and my book.

Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Jenny!

When Jennifer Walkup isn’t writing or reading, she’s spending time with her husband and young sons, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and coming up with costume ideas for Halloween. She’s obsessed with good coffee and new recipes, and likes broccoli on her pizza, flowers in her hair, flip-flops on her feet, and the number 13. A member of SCBWI and RWA, Jennifer also serves as fiction editor for The Meadowland Review and teaches creative writing at The Writers Circle. Second Verse is her first [published] novel.

When Nancy Cole Silverman contacted me and said that she had a story to tell, I settled back to hear how she had finally found an agent, decided to self-publish, saw her book on bookstore shelves, or something along those lines. Instead, Nancy told me that she’d faced down a group of extremists who had stolen her home, and might have taken her life. This put making it on a whole other level.

Nancy’s true life story has enough thrills and chills that I offer it as my Halloween gift to you. I am so glad Nancy got in touch, because she made me realize that sometimes we have to do more even than dig deep and pursue a dream. Sometimes we have to take a very bad wrong, and find the courage to make it right.

I realized I’d made it when I was asked to be a federal witness against a group of rightwing extremists that tried to steal my house out from under me. That may seem like an awkward moment for an author to come to grips with the idea that she’s made it, but for me it spelled the end of a nightmare and the beginning of a book.

When in Doubt, Don’t! took fifteen years to write. Not that I worked on it consciously. But in the back of my mind I knew I had a story to tell. I just wasn’t quite certain how to tell it, or even what I could share, for that matter.

Some may call it writers’ block or just plain stuck, but I needed time between me and the events that transpired back in 1996. Then finally it hit me. The theme of my book wasn’t the obvious story line. I wasn’t simply going to write about how I was a single mom and hoodwinked into allowing a group of rightwing extremists to move into my home. Nor how they had booby-trapped it with guns and ammo and threatened to financially overthrow the government, not to mention me. That in-and-of-itself had all the makings of a movie of the week, and I could and did write it as a piece of fiction, names and places changed, including my own.

But that wasn’t all I wanted to share. Over the years as I thought about writing this book I considered making it a memoir or an in-depth news story. I’d worked in enough radio newsrooms in Los Angeles to know the drill. In the end the media was actually my sword and salvation: I used it to keep my story front and center and in the news every day until the FBI and Federal Marshalls were understandably sick of me. But when the story was picked up by the Washington Post and nightly news, it was all worth it. Fourteen long months later, I found myself in a federal courtroom and I realized I had made it. I had stared into the eyes of anarchists and won. I had my house back.

But the real theme of this book, the story within the story, wasn’t just a fast paced suspense novel. It was that no matter what happens in life, no matter how terrible it may seem at the moment, it’s what we make of the events that hit us that matters.

Nancy Cole Silverman enjoyed a long and successful career in radio before turning to print journalism and later to fiction.

Nancy was one of the first female on-air television reporters in her hometown of Phoenix, AZ. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s she turned to the business side of broadcasting, becoming one of the top advertising sales executives in the market. After stints at KNX, KFWB, KABC and KXTA radio, she was appointed General Manager at KMPC, making her one of only two female managers in America’s second-largest radio market.

But in her heart of hearts, Nancy thought first of herself as a writer. Today Nancy is a full-time author. Her newest book, When in Doubt, Don’t! has just been released as an ebook and in paperback. Her first novel, The Centaur’s Promise, was published in 2010 by Eloquent Books, and three of her short novels, A Much Married Woman, The Salvationist and The Blood Drive, have been released as audio books by Mind Wings Audio. Nancy lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Bruce Silverman.

One of the things I have always loved about the Made It Moments forum is that it welcomes such a wide variety of writers. We’ve had Edgar winners and nominees, we’ve had the greenest of debut newbies, we’ve had people trying out brand new micro presses, people who reached the top of bestseller lists–both on their own and with a publisher behind them–authors made into international hits and people who said “heck no” to the traditional publishing scene. Today’s Momenter has tried both, and has very strong feelings about where she wanted to wind up, at least for a while. I found her reasoning and her process interesting, and I think you will, too.

My made it moment commenced in August of 2012.  I received an email from the editor-in-chief of Solstice Publishing, telling me they were interested in my historical romance.  Included in the email was a contract, which I poured over eventually.  Mainly what I felt when I received the email was shock.  I probably sat there for a good twenty minutes with my mouth hanging open.  I was practically in tears I was so exhilarated.  That was one of the best moments of my life.  I had self-published books before, but this…this was different.  A publisher had accepted my manuscript after the whole submission process.  It was exciting.

The next moment came when I received the cover image from the cover artist.  Honestly, up until that point, none of it seemed real.  I probably stared for a bit at the cover too.  I was just so overwhelmed.  And it was perfect, exactly what the characters would have looked like.

When the e-book was released, I held an event on Facebook and invited all of my connections.  Though not too many people joined, because I was basically unknown as an author, it was very validating to have people commenting on the book and to have them as excited about it as I was.

The final made it moment occurred when I received my proof copy.  It came in the mail.  When I finally had the book in my hands, I felt a mixture of awe and pride.  I did it!  I published a book traditionally.  And what really cemented it was the fact that the book was the culmination of a very long project for me.  Later came the reviews, of course, and that was so wonderful because more than anything, I wanted people to love the characters like I did.  It had nothing to do with money or fame, but just a wish for people to enjoy the book.  So it was all very exciting!  I still can’t believe it sometimes.  I made it!

At the tender age of nine, Marie Lavender began writing stories. She majored in Creative Writing in college because that was all she ever wanted – to be a writer. After graduating, she sought out her dream to publish a book. Since then, Marie has published sixteen books. Her real love is writing romances, but she has also written mysteries, literary fiction and dabbled a little in paranormal stories. Marie Lavender lives in the Midwest with her family and three cats. She has more works in progress than she can count on two hands.