A Deep Sigh of Relief

I suppose this would be the appropriate time to cue Etta James’s “At Last.” But it’s in the wrong musical genre for this post and I don’t want to copy a Hoover vaccuum cleaner advertisement. Nonetheless, with a deep sigh of relief and excitement, I’m linking to this news story.

Publishers Weekly has the announcement of my new book deal. Power Chord: One Man’s Ear-Splitting Quest to Find His Guitar Heroes closed with HarperCollins recently. It’s been a long, long quest to reach this point. In many ways, this book deal was about 18 months in the making. It’s been exciting, exhausting, thrilling, nerve-wracking, and every other -ing you can think of.

In the coming days, I’ll recount the trek to this book deal and share some lessons I learned along the way. Even though I’ve spent years observing the publishing industry for this blog, there were still so many aspects of the business that surprised me duing this experience. I’ll give you those surprises so hopefully you can be even better prepared when you submit your own book.

Oh, and one clarification for the record, the PW report has a typo in it. I don’t actually have a MFA. Instead, I have a Master of Arts with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Same amount of workshops, same amount of having Barry Hannah rip my stories to shreds (which I masochistically adored), but different degree.