YAY | Leela Lou Dahlin

This day has been a long time coming….well…I guess in the scheme of things it hasn’t been that long. It was about 2 years ago that I got serious and announced to my mother, sister and brother-in-law that I was writing a book and I was going to attempt being published. I’ve learned a lot in these couple of years but it’s all been worth it.

I now have a lot of friends that are authors and they are some of the most helpful people I’ve ever encountered. Although we’ve never met each other I’ve never met anyone not ready to help you with a piece of advice or a helpful hint. Thank you to all of you wonderfully creative people.

Aaaannnnndddd here is A Haught Date a story that started in my head as I waited in a doctor’s office and heard the receptionist call out, “Mr. Haught…we’re ready for you.” Just like that my mind took off. What would it be like to have a name like Haught? What if you were a very attractive man with that name? It doesn’t take much to get my mind on a roll but by the time my name was called I had a kernel of a story, three Haught brothers and a list of titles. (After talking to my mother about this very recently I may have to find some cousins for these guys she came up with some great titles)

You can check out Camden Haught’s story he’s the youngest of the three and the first story that grew from that doctor’s office visit. Inspiration can come from so many places. I, for one, am glad about that. Click on the book cover or click here to order.

So I had plans to submit my novella A Haught Date to Carina Press for their holiday call for submissions, but Loose ID had a 3 sentence pitch contest on FaceBook. I was selected to submit my partial MS and then they asked for the full. This was my first full request *happy dance* I’m pretty new to this whole thing. I have 3 books finished A Wish Granted, A Haught Date and Rumor Has It. These books are all independent although A Haught Date and Rumor Has It are stories in different series.

Anyhoo… there is a possibility they want me to go through revisions and I am super happy about that. I’m not sure about me and novellas my finished total was 34,998 and the max allowed by Carina Press for this call was 35000. Maybe I just picked the wrong story for a novella it was too much story for that I think. I am so super excited about the possibility being published by Loose ID since I read their books al the time.

So this is my second book I’ve submitted and the editor who responded to my email was so helpful about what she did like and what didn’t work with my story. I truly appreciated that part of it. I have gotten the thank you but no letters for my first book and they can be so frustrating. There is no telling why your book wasn’t liked it just didn’t fit in with what they were doing now. That’s not saying anything about how I could do better next time. I do understand that there are people who want to argue and fight and question why their book wasn’t chosen but there are some of us who respect the decision that was made but would like to know what they didn’t like so they can fix it the next time.

So I will report what happens next with the revisions. I’m not totally sure how that works but I’m ready for whatever 🙂 Happy writing.