The Call

The first half of yesterday passed with some degree of success.

A medium sized cockroach corpse in my bedroom doorway.

Excellent, the traps are working. Granted, I didn’t know there were roaches as big as that in the flat, the ones I’ve seen so far were a lot smaller but a dead big one is better than live small ones.

Result.

Back to work on an overrunning (so not my fault) project that was finally on its last day and then catching up with the things that had fallen behind as a result of that (not so very far).

And then, in the second half of Friday came The Call.

The call every writer idly, but secretly, dreams about and plays out in their head, never admitting it to anyone, of course. I am now paranoid that by Monday they’ll have changed their minds but the exhilaration is fresh enough that I want to blog about it.

Even if the publishers do, for some reason, realise they made a big mistake – that they mixed my number up with someone else’s or they find out someone with my name was involved in arms trading with Iraq or wrote a parody comparing something grey with something shit…(eek)… nothing is going to take away the feeling when someone tells you they LOVE your work.

Even though I’ve had publishing deals for EFL stuff, 3 now, it is quite dry. Six months or more after submitting it, you get something like this:

“We read your proposal with interest and would like to offer you a contract for the completed X. Contracts will be duly issued. Very few people will ever read it and we’re not going to go out of our way to market it.”

The Call for a novel with a mainstream publisher,  I can tell you, is just what you fantasise about. Three days after sending it in, I got:

“I’ve been buzzing since I read your submission…It’s a GENIUS concept…You’re a good writer too…Everyone in the office has read it…They loved it…We’d like to offer you a two book deal.”

I couldn’t believe it. I spent the rest of the day only able to express myself with multiple exclamation marks and in capital letters – habits I deplore usually. In retrospect,  there had been some signs.

The Editor I sent it to and had followed on Twitter, had followed me back the next day. I thought it was just Twitter reciprocity.

Another sign I’d missed was that she’d emailed me an hour before the call. But I’d skimmed past the bit where she said she thought it was an exciting query, looking for the  “it’s not a good fit for us” or “we didn’t fall in love with it” or the usual rejection phrase. So I thought she’d maybe want to speak to me at some point to tell me “we sort of minimally liked it but” and then I’d spend the rest of my life rewriting it.

I said I was at home and she could call me. But it was Friday afternoon, I didn’t think she’d want to call me then, I mean she’d be wanting to think about the weekend and just getting important stuff out of her inbox, but she did want to.

Then I had an hour where I felt like I was preparing for a hideous combination of interview/exam/first date. I had a total blank on what the hell the proposed book was about; I wasn’t wearing the right clothes (?!); I’d been listening to Johnny Cash all morning – that wasn’t women’s fiction-y enough; the cockroach cadaver was still laying under the tissue I’d hidden it with so I could  trick myself  into picking it up later. It was just all wrong.

And then it was ten minutes of ego stroking bliss.

It’s Saturday now, I’ve spent the morning filling out my author profile and thinking about front cover ideas and supplying the information they need to raise a contract. I’d tell you what it is but I’m supposed to be keeping it under wraps. That sounds smug doesn’t it? (Smugness may come later, now I’m too paranoid). Suffice to say it’s with Harper Collins’ new digital romance division Harper Impulse which is just the perfect fit for me.

Until Monday when I get The Other Call. The reality one. But I’ve got another day and half to enjoy this bit at least. And to pick up the cockroach.