My Call Story

I’ve been reading Harlequin romances since I was a  young teen--my mother used to put them in my Christmas stocking. Even though I ended up trying to write for Tender/Romance for a long time, Presents was the line I personally liked to read.

I started writing my first romance novel when I was just out of college, living in New York City, and mistakenly thinking it would be a breeze. I wrote about guess what? A young woman living in New York City. What a surprise.

Four manuscripts, rejections, and years later, I’d managed to final in the Golden Heart in 2000, which was a great experience, but nothing came of it in the end--the finaling manuscript was rejected at the partial stage by Mills & Boon Tender and at the full stage by Silhouette Romance.

I decided to put romance to the side for awhile and concentrate on short stories and serials for women’s magazines in the UK, which was a flourishing market for me. I’d had my first story accepted by The People’s Friend magazine in England in 1999, and within a few years had over a hundred short stories accepted by various markets. All those publishing credits was a great feeling, but I knew I wanted to write a novel. And even if I hadn’t realized that, my writing would have told me—my stories kept getting longer, pushing the 4,000 word limit on a regular basis! During this time I also connected with a terrific group of women, The Wild Geese, who write for these magazines and offer absolutely fabulous support.

I continued to jot notes down for romance novels—some of these ideas and characters experienced different incarnations in my later novels. I never felt like I had enough time to sit down and write 50,000 words—who does have that kind of time?! As every writer knows, you have to make it.

Then in the summer of 2006, I had my first book, a rewritten serial titled Far Horizons, accepted for publication by a small UK publisher, Robert Hale. Realizing that I actually could write a novel and have it published pushed me over the edge and I started to write a romance novel, six years after I’d started my last one!

In retrospect, part of me wonders if I should have tried writing a romance again earlier, but another more realistic part of me realizes that seven years of short story and serial writing really helped me hone my voice and improve my plotting. So even though it was a long wait in some respects, I learned a lot along the way and am grateful for those lessons.

The romance I started that summer was one I’d been thinking about for several years, aimed at the Tender/Romance line. Yet when I actually sat down to write, the first few paragraphs—in fact, the entire prologue—flowed so smoothly and so surprisingly and most definitely was not targeted at the Tender/Romance line! I knew it was Presents, felt it, and yet was surprised. Me? Write that glittering, international, passionate romance? How did that happen?

I’m still not sure, but I knew I was writing a book I loved and I knew where it would fit. And most importantly, I believed in this story, I cared about it in a deeper way than nearly anything else I’d ever written, and I think that’s crucial for every writer.

Of course, not every book is going to pull your heartstrings in the same way or as strongly as perhaps your first, but that deep sense of ‘needing’ to write this story carried me through 30,000 words in one week alone.

By mid-July I was ready to submit a partial to Mills & Boon, which I did with some trepidation, doing the mental math of when they would receive it, how long before it got off the slush pile, how long to read it, etc, etc… so maybe they’d get back to me in a month? I was optimistic, as you can probably tell.

Five months later, a few days before Christmas, I got a thick letter from Mills & Boon and opened it with trembling fingers. They liked the story and my voice, but there were three pages of revisions. Fortunately, I’m someone who actually likes revisions and my parents offered to watch the children for a few days so armed with a large cup of coffee by my computer I got to work.

I finished the revisions in just over two weeks, sent the manuscript in, and settled down for what they had said would be a sixteen week wait. Again I did the mental math, and told myself not to expect to hear anything before April.  Of course, that didn’t stop me from checking my e-mail compulsively. One morning I was staring at my e-mail inbox while the children played upstairs (with increasing shouts and bedlam) thinking how pathetic I was to refresh the browser window one more time… and what do you know, a new e-mail message popped up, from the editor I’d sent my manuscript to at Mills & Boon! That was a wonderful, terrible moment. Wonderful, because I ‘d finally heard—and so quickly!—and terrible because I had yet to click on it.

Click on it I did, and found my editor was requesting more revisions but in a very positive way. Afraid to be too excited, I worked on the revisions and sent them to her within a week. I felt like I was living and breathing that story by that point, walking around in a fog with fragments of dialogue in my head. Even when I went to sleep I dreamed about the characters!

Then I received another e-mail, just one day after I sent the second round of revisions in, this time requesting more revisions! I’m so thankful the editorial team at Mills & Boon saw a diamond in the rough and was willing to read several rounds of pretty serious revisions.

Yet another set of revisions, and finally, on February 9, 2007, I received The Call. I’d daydreamed about that moment, you know the one: the phone call where an editor actually makes you an offer, wants to buy YOUR book, and here it finally was happening. I didn’t get much sleep that night and for the next few weeks I felt like walking up to everybody and telling them ‘Do you know I’m a published novelist?!’ Fortunately I mostly curbed that impulse.

A few months later a colleague of my husband’s mentioned that she’d heard I’d written a romance. She asked who published it and when I said ‘Harlequin’ her eyes widened and she said ‘WOW.’ That pretty much sums it up for me!

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Copyright © 2007 by Katharine Swartz