I’m sharing a little bit of the story of how my upcoming book came to be because so many people asked about it and because I’ll enjoy having written it down once I go to print my blog into book form for this year. You can read part one here.
I stared stunned at my inbox for a solid minute and a half before googling the name of the editor signed to the bottom. You know, just to be sure I wasn’t on an episode of Punk’d. Turns out, she was a totally real person who legitimately worked for a publishing house and not at all Ashton Kutcher. I spent the better part of the next twenty four hours composing a five sentence reply. I am only slightly neurotic.
The next morning I heard back from the editor and in her reply she asked if I was going to be attending the Allume conference which, at the time, I was not. The conference was only a short two and a half hour drive from me and so I told her that I would be happy to drive up and meet her while she was in town for the conference. OF COURSE I WOULD.
Then I sent a frantic text to my friend Jessica, who was at work on her first book. I had never asked her any publishing questions before because I didn’t want to be THAT friend, you know? But after I got the email I was all “JESS I JUST GOT THIS EMAIL HELP WHAT DO I DO?”
Jess texted back that she was having dinner with her agent right that very minute, who said that she was also going to be at Allume and would be willing to give me some feedback as a favor to a friend before I met with the publisher, which was very kind of her because agents don’t typically do that sort of thing.
And then because I am southern I started to worry that maybe showing up at Allume without a ticket would not be good etiquette of me.
See, back in 2010 I had just started reading a blog about how to make an income from blogging. When I saw that the ladies who ran the blog were hosting a free dinner in Nashville to provide some hands-on instruction I thought it would be really fun to go. I called my three best girlfriends and said “Who wants to go to Nashville for the weekend?” because this was before we had six kids between us and could just pick up and jet-set on a whim.
I thought it was just so generous of those ladies to host a free dinner with all that information.
Except that dinner was not free at all on account of how it was actually part of a much bigger event taking place that weekend called The Blissdom Conference.
That’s right.
I totally crashed Blissdom.
Let me tell you at what point I realized this: DURING THE DESSERT COURSE.
As I was mingling with some friends before the dinner started people kept saying things like “I didn’t know you were here! I haven’t seen you at all!” and asking me questions such as “Have you taken any good sessions yet?” and “What have you liked the most so far?” and I was like “Um…I guess this one…is going to be good…”
I was completely confused as to why every one was speaking in past tense about a session that had not actually taken place yet because I was operating under the assumption that this dinner session WAS the thing. As in, the whole shebang. I had no idea there was an entire conference taking place around me and that also I was supposed to have a ticket for said conference in order to attend this little dinner shindig.
About three quarters of the way through our peach cobbler Tiffani leaned over and whispered “Hey, why is everyone in here wearing those badges? Are we supposed to have badges?” That is the precise moment in which I noticed that every single person at our table, nay, ROOM, was wearing a Blissdom Conference badge. And I was like “OH, FUDGE. I HAVE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE.”
So this time around I thought that maybe I should just actually attend the Allume conference, lest I get a reputation as a conference crasher.
Then Jessica’s agent emailed me to ask that in order to fit me in, could I please send her my proposal by the last week of September? Which was still amazing news except for that part about how I didn’t have a proposal, I had a couple of chapters and a shabby outline. And how the end of September was three weeks away.
For the next three weeks I worked feverishly around the clock, and with the help of my family letting me lock myself away, more frappucinos than I can count and a ton of prayer I put together a 25,000+ word proposal.
I hit send and then a few weeks later I drove several hours away to the Allume conference, where I did not know a single person, to meet with the agent in person and find out what she thought about the story. I had no idea that she might want to represent me, I was just both excited and nervous to get some constructive criticism on the project before I met with the team from the publishing house later that weekend.
(Tomorrow I’ll share a little bit more of the story here and on Elise Blaha Cripe’s podcast + some of my favorite writing resources such as the template I used to put together the proposal.)
