Woo Hoo!!!! My agent called me this morning with great news! And she worried she was calling too early. No, Karen [Grencik], you can call me at 2 am. with this kind of news!! Charlesbridge Publishing has decided to acquire Goldy Luck and the Three Chans!! What a long road it has been for this manuscript! Just a little recap: it was submitted to Tricycle Press in 2006. Three editors and three and a half years later, Tricycle offered me a contract, but Random House (which had fairly recently acquired Tricycle) decided to close down the imprint. The axe fell quickly. The sad news was released to editors and authors in November 2010, and the editors and staff were gone by the end of January. Out of 30 odd books that were under contract through 2012, Random House may have kept 2 or 3. Goldy Luck was not one of them.
But onwards and forwards, as they say. So, I sent it to my former editor at Charlesbridge, Yolanda Scott, who reaffirmed that Charlesbridge does not publish a lot of fairy or folk tales, but she liked the multi-cultural theme. She passed the story along to editor Alyssa Pusey who contacted me in March 2011, and indicated she really liked the story. She wrote me a long editorial letter, and I made revisions based on her suggestions. However, after some deliberations at their acquisitions meeting, the Marketing Department was unsure whether Charlesbridge should take the leap into publishing a fractured fairy tale. But, they decided to not make a decision, and shelve it till the fall.
In June, as luck would have it, Alyssa was going to be at the ALA convention, and we met up for lunch to review the manuscript once more. In the meantime, Karen submitted Goldy Luck to several publishers. Unfortunately, we had two rejections, and never heard back from any of the others.
But I think Charlesbridge is meant to have this story. I really enjoyed working with them on Otto's Rainy Day, and they treat their authors very well, so I'm ecstatic! Alyssa will be getting the contract to Karen in a couple of weeks.
This fairy tale may finally have it's Happily Ever After.
The moral? Don't give up. Perseverance is a writer's greatest tool.
No comments:
Post a Comment