Finally, another Taking Back the Past post! We’re now up to Between the Lines, my third book for Arabesque and the third entry in Harlequin’s recently released 3-in-1 re-issue, Sweet Passion. Between the Lines marks two significant events in my writing history: acquiring an agent and doing research.

As I told you in an earlier post, I negotiated (or, didn’t negotiate) my first tw0-book contract with Arabesque. I don’t quite remember how exactly when I acquired an agent, but I do remember that the agent negotiated the contract for my second two-book contract. I learned a couple of things from this experience. First, having an agent doesn’t necesssarily mean that you’ll get more money. I remember the disappointment I felt when my agent came back with an offer from the publisher that was not very different from the offer for the first contract. I assumed that I had paid my dues with that first contract, and now as a published author, I would be compensated accordingly. Not so.

Conventional wisdom puts the average advance for a new author at $5000. Quite a few make less and many make more. This was true in 1994 when I sold my first book and it’s still true today. I won’t tell you where I was, but by the tone of this post, I’m sure you can guess.

I know some of you are crying about now because you had dreams of getting rich, quitting your day job and buying a new house from the advance for selling your first book. All I can say is, “Wake up!” Now, a lot of writers do a lot better than I did. I started out writing romance, genre fiction, where big, fat advances are not very common. As I recommended in an earlier post, you really need to sell well with the first book because that book determines the floor (and in many ways, the ceiling) for subsequent advances. For example, if you start out with a $5000 advance, it’s highly unlikely that your next advance is going to be $50,ooo. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

But there is the reality of publishing. $5000 may be selling well for you and your book. You only know that you’ve gotten the best deal that you can get if you shop your book around. Good agents know the price that a book should bring and they fight for that price. Typically, an advance is based on the expected first year sales of the book. So, if publishers expect a book to make $5000 in the first year, then you get a $5000 advance. Some publishers, like Harlequin, tend to pay a standard advance rate but their first year earnings typically exceed that amount. At least, that’s been my experience.

So how do you figure out how much you’ll make on a book? If your book is a mass market paperback (those books you see in the racks at the grocery story), it probably sells for $6.99. Your contract will specify a royalty rate of 6 or 8 percent; I’m not sure which is standard these days. That means that for each book that sells, you get 56 cents (8%) or 42 cents (6%). At the 8 percent rate, you’ll have to sell around 10,000 books to make $5000.

If your book is a trade paperback (one of the larger paperbacks), it sells for about 14.00. At a standard 7% royalty rate, you’ll get about one dollar per book. So, you’ll have to sell about 5000 books to make $5000. Hardover is a bit different, but let’s keep it simple. Let’s say you have a 10% royalty rate on a 22.00 book. You’ll make $2.20 per book, meaning that you have to sell about 2500 books to make $5000.

I bet you’re wondering how publishers decide which format to use for a book. I have no idea. They probably consider a lot of factors, including what price the target market is willing pay. I have sold in all three formats and there are upsides and downsides to each. The key point is to negotiate the overall best deal you can, regardless of the format, and that is why I strongly recommend finding a good agent. (And, yes, that’s easier said than done.) I learned the hard way that I’m not savvy enough to negotiate my own deals. Try to learn from my mistake.

I’ve found a few web sites especially helpful during the agent search, AgentQuery, Preditors & Editors, and Everyone Who’s Anyone in Publishing. If you have $20 a month to invest in your career, I recommend Publishers Marketplace. You can subscribe to the Publisher’s Lunch free newsletter here.

Now back to Between the Lines. In all honesty, I was reluctant to sign that second contract. I felt as though I was cheapening myself and my work for accepting such a low offer. My agent calmly explained that, wihout other offers on the table, there was very little room for tough negotiation tactics. So, reluctantly, I signed that second contract.

I have one writer friend who refused the second contract because she felt her work was worth more than she was offered. Unfortunately, she has not published a book since. For some of you that may mean that she made the wrong choice. I’m not sure that’s the case. You have to make decisions that you can live with, and only you can decide what’s right for you. I often ask myself what would have happened had I not signed the second contract. Would I still be a writer? How would my career have progressed? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I’ve certainly wondered about them.

I’ll wrap up this agent discussion with an update. I’m no longer with my first agent. In fact, I’m now on my third agent and I’m praying for a long relationship. I’m happy to say that all the signs are pointing in that direction. You have to realize that the author-agent relationship is a special one and it may take a few missteps to find the agent that’s right for you. My two previous agents are very good at their jobs and well-respected in the industry. They worked well for me, both of them taking me to a new level in my career. I appreciate their hard work on my behalf. That our relationship didn’t last forever is not an indictment of them or of me; it’s more that the relationships just ran their course.

Now let’s talk about research. Between the Lines is the first book that I actually researched. I spent a couple of days in a newspaper office in one of the Atlanta suburbs. It was a lot of fun and I had a great day! I interviewed people in the office and then I just sat around and observed them at work. I think I got the richest data from the observation.

That’s about it for Between the Lines. Have a great week!

Finally, I’m back with the Taking Back the Past series. This week’s topic is For All Time, my second book, which is also the second story included in the upcoming Harlequin 3-in-1 re-issue, Sweet Passion. With this book, I learned some tough, but valuable, publishing lessons.

For All Time was the second book of the two-book contract that I had with Arabesque Books. I got the idea from my cousin who had recently lost her job. For All Time tells the story of a young middle-class couple whose marriage is challenged when the husband loses his job at the same time that the wife gets a promotion on hers. I had a lot of fun writing this story and I was excited about it being even better than my first book, Bands of Gold. Hey, I had a writing career to build and I was serious about building it.

Then reality publishing happened. The general process from manuscript to book takes a few stages. First, the author completes the mansuscript and sends it to the editor for approval. The editor reads the manscript and issues the author a revision letter with questions, comments and recommendations. I was fortunate in that my editorial letters always resulted in a better, tighter, stronger story. So while I can’t say that I liked getting them, I can say that I appreciated them.

So the author receives the letter, reviews it and, after considering how to address all the listed items, makes a call to editor to clarify any concerns and to let the editor know how she plans to handle the items outlined in the letter. Note that the writer is not obliged to do everything the editor requested, but she is obliged to consider each item. During this phone call, the editor and author go back and forth a bit and finally agree, in broad terms, on how the manuscript will change or not change.

The author then makes the changes, and any other changes she thinks will make the story stronger. Many authors, me included, appreciate this final opportunity to make changes in the manuscript and use it as a opportunity to improve the story. Once the changes are completed, the author sends the revised manuscript back to the editor. If all goes well, the author gets a phone call from the editor a few weeks later saying that the manuscript is accepted and any associated advance money is being sent to the author. At this point, the author celebrates.

A few months later, the author receives galleys in mail. Galleys are book pages printed on standard copy/printer paper. The author’s job is to read the galleys to make sure that no errors were introduced into the manuscript during the typesetting process. Typically, the author gets a few days to do this. If everything in the publication process is working well, the author may have a few typos to correct and a few missing words to insert. If things are not working well, the author may realize that book that is being published is quite different from the book she submitted. The latter is what happened to me with For All Time.

When I got the galleys, I found that the book the publishers had typeset was my original manscript before I made the revisions. I was horrified! Remember, I had spent a great deal of time addressing all my editor’s concerns and making other improvements in the story, and now none of those were in the book. All that was there was a much weaker story than the revised one I had submitted to my editor. I immediately went into panic mode and wondered if I had sent them the wrong version book when I sent in the final edits. I checked and I hadn’t, or that’s the way I remember it, but to this day, I can’t definitively say who was at fault.

My next step was to call my editor. She told me to make the corrections on the galleys. I did so, feeling a sense of relief that the weaker version of my story would never hit bookstore shelves. Guess what happened? You’ve got it. The changes that I made to the galleys didn’t make it into the book, after all. I think this was the first and last time that I read a book that I wrote after it was published. Talk about a feeling helplessness! Well, that’s exactly how I felt–helpless. All I could think was that something that was not my best work was now being sold with my name on it. And there was nothing I could do about it! I knew my career was over!

When I think about it now, I know I was being a bit niave in thinking the publisher would make the changes. You see, the contract that most authors sign with their publishers have a clause about introducing changes at the galley stage. Mine said something like I would be charged so much per page for changes over a certain limit. Now, I was more than willing to pay this charge just to see the correct version of my book hit the shelves, but I wasn’t given that option. Publishers have priorities and, though it pains me to say it, me and my $4.99 paperback were probably not that high on the priority list. I fully understand that, but it hurt then and it still hurts now.

As I said before, For All Time marked the last time that I read one of my published books. There’s too much agony in seeing things that need changing and knowing that I can’t change them. I’m not talking about publisher introduced errors only; I’m also talking about those things that I put in the story on purpose but that were wrong. For example, in For All Time, I had my hero getting unemployment benefits. A reader wrote to me and explained that I had explained the unemployment benefit process wrong. Of course, she went on to explain the correct process, but what could I do with that information? Well, I could store it in my memory bank, and I did, but there was nothing I could do to make a change in the book.

So, for me, the best way is to let the book go. Once I send in those final revisions, it’s gone. I’ve done my duty and I pray the rest of the people in the process do theirs. I guess it brings new meaning to the phrase, “Let go, and let God.”

Not surprisingly, I began looking for an agent shortly after this incident. I had negotiated (or, not negotiated if you remember the story) my first contract myself and realized that I needed professional help. I’ll tell you about my agent search in next week’s post.

Okay, we’re back on the historical journey of my writing life from my beginnings as a general market romance novelist to my current career as a Christian fiction novelist. Thanks for taking a step back in time with me. Today, we’re going waaay back to when I sold my first book. In last week’s post, I told you about my early fifth grade writing experience and that fateful trip to a Romantic Times convention in Savannah (GA) much later where I decided to embark on writing again. This post picks up with my return home after that conference.

Well, writing a book wasn’t as easy as it seemed when I was listening to those three women at the conference. I realized I didn’t know how to get started. The smartest thing I did at that point was join Georgia Romance Writers, the Atlanta Chapter of Romance Writers of America. I don’t remember now how I learned about the organization but it must have been at the convention. Anyway, I attended my first meeting, where there was only one other black person, Carla Fredd, also a beginning writer attending her first meeting. I believe it was destiny; you’ll have to ask Carla what she thinks.

Sometime later Carla and I, along with two other GRW members, Bridget Anderson and Ami V., formed a critique group. I think we met once a week, but again I’m relying on memory here. I distinctly remember that because I working full-time, I wrote on the weekends. I didn’t allow myself to leave the house on Saturday morning until I’d written three chapters, which for me was three chapters. I remember being motivated do those three chapters so that I wouldn’t have to attend the upcoming critique group meeting empty-handed.

When I think about our early critique meetings, I have to laugh. We were excellent examples of the blind leading the blind. We had no clue what we were doing. We figured out point-of-view together; we struggled together with active and passive voice. Mostly, we supported and encouraged each other. That was the upside to being in a critique group. The downside was that sometimes our comments went too far. We’d begin to change, or want to change, each other’s stories. I think I was first one in the group to make a sale because I was the first to figure out that comments from others were merely points to consider, not requests that had to be heeded.

It took me about a year to write that first book, which I titled Dreams. I started querying agents and publishers after I had a good first three chapters and a synopsis, figuring that any interest would be a great motivator to finish the book. I compiled a large collection of rejection letters during this period, most of them form letters that weren’t even copied squarely on the page. It’s funny now, but it certainly pained me back then. I’d drag myself to the mailbox, holding my breath, wondering if I could bear another rejection. But I could and I did. Finally, a few people asked to see my manuscript. And more rejections piled up. More wondering if I could bear the rejection. More learning that I could.

My turning point came when I attended my first Romance Writers of America conference and met Monica Harris. When Monica was an editor at Dell, she’d turned down my manuscript with a personal rejection letter. Now those were prizes! A personal rejection letter beat a form rejection everytime. Anyway, when I met Monica at the conference she had moved to Kensington to start Arabesque Books, a new line of African-American romances. She suggested that I submit my book to her at Kensington, which I did.

Monica bought the book (this was about a year after I finished writing it). I remember our phone conversation when she made me the offer, which is another funny story. She said she wanted to buy my book; I say okay you can have it; she said, “But I haven’t told you how much yet.” Now, this shows you how desperate I was to be published. What I did was cute but it was also unwise. That said, I’d probably do the same thing again. Sad, isn’t it? But I really wanted to be published. I’m sure some of you can identify. Still I have to warn you not to be as eager as I was. It’s more important to sell well than it is to sell. End of advice; back to story.

A year later, Dreams was published as Bands of Gold (their title). Like many first books, it has a lot of “me” in it. In fact, my cousin read it and called me up and asked, “Is this book about you?” I had to explain to her what fiction meant. Actually, she wasn’t the only one to ask me that question.

I was very excited about the publication of my first book even though there was no publisher tour, no radio gigs, no print advertising. I did what I could in terms of promotion and felt I was well on my way to a grand career as published author. I’d learn later that I needed better benchmarks with which to judge success.

Bands of Gold was a personal accomplishment that stands as a precious moment in my life. When I wrote that book, I wrote it thinking my main character, Christina, was a Christian, but I didn’t include that in the book explicitly. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Nobody restrained me so I had to have restrained myself. That self-restraint may have had a bit to do with what was going on in my life at the time. Christina was dealing with true love after achieving a certain amount of professional success and so was I. Issues of love and expressions of love were prominent in her life and in mine. Unfortunately, we both made bad decisions as a result of following our feelings instead of our faith. As you can imagine, we both ended up heartbroken.

Bands of Gold in one of the three books included in the upcoming Harlequin re-issue, Sweet Passion. I’ll tell the story of the second title in that collection next week. I hope you all are encouraged by these stories because I’m encouraging myself as I tell them. Thanks for sharing my journey.

The last post in the Taking Back the Past series ended with my decision to write Christian fiction. Rather than picking up where that post left off, I’m going to digress a bit and go back to the start of my writing career. I think this is fitting given that Harlequin is re-issuing my first three books in a 3-1 volume in April. I promise to continue that story after I take you through those first three books.

Anyway, I think you’ll find it interesting to read my reflection on my start as recorded in the nonfiction book that I wrote in 1998-9, Telling the Tale: The African-American Fiction Writer’s Guide (Berkeley, 2000). One similarity that you’ll notice in the piece I wrote back in 1998-9 and the piece I wrote last week is the noton of “life-changing” events. Last week, I wrote, “. . .that call changed the course of my life. Literally.” In Telling the Tale, I wrote: “That decision changed my life.”

When I noticed that similarity in the pieces, I wondered about my word choices. So, you tell me, should the events in both pieces be described as “life-changing” or am I given to a bit of hyperbole? You decide. You can read my account of the beginning of my writing career as recorded in Telling the Tale HERE.

Praise alert: Do you know how we prayed that the Lord would use these re-issues for His glory? Well, I got a call two nights ago from a girlfriend in a Tampa, Florida Wal-Mart (yes, cell phones have changed our lives) who noticed copies of A Family Wedding and Second Chance Dad on the shelves. She was about to purchase copies for her young daughter, thinking the books were among my new Christian fiction titles. We were able to quickly clear that up (she decided to look for The Amen Sisters for herself instead) and spent the rest of the conversation discussing the recent happenings in our lives and encouraging each other. I’m going to count that as a win in the re-issue category.

I had planned to continue this conversation earlier in the week, but life and my day job took precedence. Now that I have a moment, I’d like to continue the story that I began for you in my earlier Taking Back the Past – AFW post. In that post, I told you what was going on around the time my first Silhouette title, A Family Wedding, was first published in 1997. In this post, I want to tell you about the time around the publication of my second Silhouette title, Second Chance Dad.

I have to tell you that I was flying pretty high at this point. Remember that I had given myself three years to make a living wage from my writting. At this point, I had finished the first book of my third two-book contract with Arabesque and, with Second Chance Dad, I was writing what my editor and I planned would be the first in my three-book series on the Bell brothers. Second Chance Dad was a Christmas book, meaning that it was released around December 1997. By the way, I had four books published that year — two for Silhouette and two for Arabesque. I’m telling you I was on a roll.

Okay, back to the Bell brothers. So, Second Chance Dad was a Christmas book that introduced the three Bell brothers. Get it–Bell brothers, Christmas bells? When the book was first published there was a family tree in the front done up as Christmas bells. This is the indication that there were going to be more books about the Bell brothers. At least, there was supposed to be more, but a funny thing happened when I sat down to write the next book: I couldn’t write it. Literally, nothing came. No outline, no anything.

Well, I figured I just needed to clear my head so I decided to work on my next book for Arabesque. Again, nothing came. Hmm, I began to wonder if I was experiencing my first case of writer’s block. To get over it, I decided to take a short break from writing and come back to it after a few weeks. Well, when I came back the same thing happened. Now what I was I going to do? Well, then I thought I was being constrained by the romance format so I tried to write my first mainstream novel. I even managed to pull a story idea together and talk to an agent about it but the agent, Denise Stinson, didn’t like the idea. We ending up going back and forth on a few ideas but nothing clicked, so here I was back at square zero. What was I going to do?

Well, I ended up calling an old high school friend, Nora, and that call changed the course of my life. Literally. There’s something wonderful about talking to someone who’s known you a very long time and who knows you extremely well. Anyway, Nora quickly cut to the chase and asked me a pivotal question, “Why don’t you write something that glorifies God?” Actually, that’s not exactly what she said, but I’ll save the actual words for when I tell that story in person. Just know that the call to Nora and her question gave me a lot to think about and started me on a journey that led me to where I am today.

Nora’s question made me think about my writing. Was she saying that what I was writing wasn’t glorifying God? Now, like many of you, the first thought that came to my mind was how I handled sexaul intimacy in my romances, but that was not the point that got me. The point that got me was that my stories had no mention of God, none at all. I told positive stories but I left Him out, and I did it deliberately. I left Him out because I knew He would complicate my stories. My characters would have to deal with Him instead of just their consciences and the people around them. That makes a big difference in a story.

So I began a journey to tell a love story where He was a major character. Well, things were a bit more complicated than that because I was under contract to write another book for Arabesque and my editor at Silhouette was expecting my Bell brothers series proposal. Since I didn’t see how I was going to meet either of those commitments given my new direction, I had to let my editors know. Fortunately for me, they were very gracious and we parted amicably.

So now I was free to pursue my love story with God as a major character and I should have been happy, right? Well, I was, in a way, but there was some sadness, too, because I saw my dream of becoming a full-time writer in the three years period I had given myself fading fast. And that begins the next part of my saga. Stay tuned.

As promised, this is the first post in my Take Back the Past series. Since quite a few of the secular romances that I wrote before I started writing Christian fiction are now being re-issued, I’ve decided to give you some insight into my life at the time I was writing the books. I pray that you find some encouragement from sharing this backward journey with me. Even though I don’t write secular romances anymore, those older books represent a part of my history that I don’t want to forget.

A Family Wedding was first published in 1997 as part of Harlequin’s Silhouette Special Edition line, which means that I probably wrote it in 1996. I say probably because with most publishers there’s a year lag between the time that you submit the manuscript and the time that the book is published; with Harlequin/Silhouette, sometimes the interval is shorter. I probably went to contract on the story in 1995, since the interval from contract to manuscript delivery is typically about a year as well.

Anyway, I remember this being a very happy time for me. I had signed a contract to write my fifth and sixth novels with Arabesque and now I had a second contract with the major romance publishing house. I had accomplished a major feat. At the time, there were not many authors writing African-American romance for Harlequin so I considered myself a pioneer. Okay, I’m laughing at myself now but that’s how I was thinking.

I was also thinking that I was about to become a full-time author. I took early retirement (very early) from my job as a systems engineer with a major telecommunications company in 1995. You see, I had gone back to graduate school and was working on my second master’s degree as well. Between work, writing, and school, I knew that something had to go. So work went. That was one of the easiest decisions of my life, even though I thought my mom was going to disown me. I can still hear her voice saying, “Baby, you’re not going to quit that good job, are you?” While I don’t regret leaving my job, there was a lot of wisdom in my mother’s words.

I took what I considered to be a reasonable approach and gave myself three years to make a living wage from writing alone. With contracts from two major publishing houses, I thought I was well on my way. Little did I know what life had in store for me. I’m not a full-time writer today and my career with Harlequin and Arabesque was much shorter than I had anticipated. Let’s just say God had other plans. I’ll tell you the full story when I tell you about writing Second Chance Dad, my second book for Harlequin. Stay tuned.

Before I end this post, I want to pass along a couple of tidbits to the budding writers reading this entry. This time was not all good times for me because there were some people who were unhappy with my sale to Silhouette. It’s inappropriate to go into details, but I learned that you have to follow your own drummer in this business and not be deterred by the negative voices of others. Treat people well, even when they don’t treat you well. The only actions that you control are your own. Looking back, I think I could have done a better job of this myself.

I can’t end the post on such a drab note so I’ll share something positive before closing. I remember being very happy with the editorial support that I was getting at both Silhouette and Arabesque. Monica Harris, who bought my first book, edited all my books at Arabesque and she spoiled me. I didn’t even hope to get an editor as good at Harlequin, but I did in Cathleen Treacy. Cathleen’s no longer at Harlequin; the last I heard from her she was living the life out West, but that was years ago. Monica is now an editor at Dorchester. Thank you, Monica and Cathleen.

Okay, I’m out.

I posted a while back about being concerned about my upcoming re-issues from Harlequin. A lot of my concern stemmed from confusing readers who have certain expectations for my work now that I write Christian fiction. Thanks to the support of some of you and to what I refer to as my “Anne Rice” moment, I decided to let it go and let God take care of it.

He did exactly that. I just saw the cover for my latest re-issue and I laughed out loud. You know why? Because there’s no way anybody could confuse that cover with a Christian fiction novel. And when I think about it, even the title, Sweet Passion, suggests that the story is not Christian fiction. And it’s not. Let’s be clear: my earlier romances include sexual content (though I’ve been told it’s pretty mild) that I do not put in my books today.

So now I rest easy. Actually, I started resting easy a while back after reading something that Anne Rice said about not being ashamed of her earlier books. I think she referred to them as “a record of her past.” I love that! When I look at my Christian fiction titles, they all deal with people who have done things in their past that they haven’t really dealt with, things they feel they need to hide or be ashamed of. How fitting is it then that my past is now staring me in the face?

A theme of my current books, and it’s always there, is that with Christ, the past is nothing to beat yourself down about. If you’ve been there, you can help somebody else who’s there now. Now it’s my turn to live like that’s true. Instead of being worried about the re-issues, I’m excited about what God’s going to do with them.

So how am I going to take back the past? Well, instead of focusing on the books, I’m going to focus on what they represent as “a record of my past.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll blog about what I was thinking when I was writing each of the re-issues and what was going on in my life at the time. I think you’ll enjoy reading the story behind the story.

One more thing. This notion of “taking back the past” relates directly to Geigh’s comments about fighting for what’s yours even though your own actions put it in jeopardy in the first place. Maybe you need to take back your past, too. You’re welcome to join me.

I recently learned that Silhouette Books is re-issuing two books that I wrote for them in 1997, Second Chance Dad and A Family Wedding. The books are being re-issued as part of the pre-launch of Silhouette’s new African American romance line. Second Chance Dad hits the bookstores in December 2005 and A Family Wedding makes an appearance in February 2006.

While it’s usually profitable for an author to see her books re-issued, I have mixed emotions about my upcoming re-issues. You see, I wrote these books before I started writing Christian fiction and they contain explicit sex scenes that I would not put in a book today. The explicit scenes are only symptoms of the problem that I have with those books; my problem is that the characters in those books have no faith life. It’s as though they live in a world in which God does not exist. You never see them balance their life decisions with the tenets of their faith.

Many of you have read my older titles, so I’d like to hear what you think about them in terms of the faith lives of the characters. How do you think adding (or, developing) a faith life element for the main characters would have changed the stories? Would they have been better, worse, or just different? Let me know what you think.