At last!

I've finally sold my first novel. Eleven books, but only one novel as such. I wrote it some years ago and nearly - nearly! - sold it several time. And each time, I got comments and re-wrote on the basis of those comments and sent it somewhere else and almost sold it.

This time it has happened. Leonie Tyle, who used to work for UQP, knows me because I actually sent her the first three chapters some years ago and she rang me - rang Melbourne from Queensland! - to say that she liked it a lot, but they didn't publish this genre and did I have anything else? I wrote something else, but it didn't work out.

Now, I got a totally unexpected email from her saying she had heard I had a novel and could she look at it? Is the Pope Catholic?!? ;-) She heard because of an as-yet unpublished interview in Magpies magazine, by Edwina Harvey, meant to promote Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, which Magpies had reviewed favourably in 2009. Apparently, she had a hole in her schedule due to a novel that had had to be put back to 2011.

Only a few days after that interview, the thing has gone through the acquisitions committee and it will be out later this year. It does need re-writes, but hell, I'd stand on my head to get this one out! I cared about it when I was writing it and had planned to get it out and re-work yet again and see if I could sell it this time.

Who would have thought the publisher would approach ME?

And just for the record, after all I have said about fantasy novels, this one is a fantasy novel, a YA werewolf tale. But it's not fat and it's not part of a trilogy! And it's inspired by a mediaeval romance. Yay!