Hi, friends! I am absolutely OVER THE MOON to share the news that my picture book, Girls Belong In Space, has been acquired by HarperCollins!!!
Working with the talented Gillian Gamble, Luana, and the team at HC is a dream come true!!š¤©š¤©š¤©š¤©š¤©š¤©
Many of you know that the journey to having a book traditionally published can be a long and winding one with lots of bumps along the way. I want to share with you what the journey looked like for this story.
It started with finding my wonderful literary agent, Elisa Houot, which you can read about here.
We went out on submission to editors in April 2021 with a different picture book and a middle grade project. Girls was one of my first stories, but I'd had such polar opposite feedback from critique partners that I didn't consider it a story worth sending to Elisa. (The original title had been Girls Don't Belong In Space, and it was a sort of ironic/sarcastic list of reasons why, even though girls had the necessary skills to work in the space industry, they just didn't belong. Eventually, the narrator came around and realized their flawed logic, but there was definitely some snark behind the voice! š )
BUT...in a last minute decision, I sent it off to her with a few other stories and basically said, "I don't know what to do with this. If you don't love it, I'm planning on just throwing it in the trash."
Much to my surprise, she DID love it!! She loved how different it was. She loved it enough to want to send it out to editors almost immediately, so we did!
And then we waited...and waited...and WAITED.
Normally, with a picture book submission, you hear back from at least a couple of editors within the first week or so. For this story, we got ONE pass at week 3, but otherwise silence. Six weeks went by and both Elisa and I were a little freaked out. We had no idea how the story was being received!
Finally, in late July, we sent Girls out to a whole new batch of editors and prepared to wait in silence again. Another pass or two came in, but it was still very odd to have so few responses.
Then, on August 20, 2021, I got an email from Elisa saying we had a "revise and resubmit" request from HarperCollins!! I tried not to get too excited because I'd read that less than half of R&R's end up in an offer of publication. (But, let's be honest, I did jump up and down a few times!)
Over the next week or so, I considered the feedback Luana offered and knew it made sense. She loved the underlying message of the story and wanted to know if I would be open to dropping the sarcastic tone to make the message more clear. I tweaked the manuscript until it was something I was confident in. I loved the new version. It just felt right.
We sent Luana the revisions on a Friday and heard back early that next week. She loved the new version too and wanted to take it to an acquisitions meeting on September 22!!
The month of September seemed to drag on as we waited for that all-important meeting. (For those who are unfamiliar, the acquisitions meeting is when an editor takes a project they want to work on to their whole team- sales, marketing, art director, lead publisher, etc- and try to convince them the project is worth making an offer on. Ultimately, this group decides if they will acquire the story or not.)
When the 22nd rolled around, I was a mess. Pacing, trying to distract myself, a total ball of nervous energy. Around dinner time, my phone rang.
WE HAD AN OFFER!!!!
I don't really remember the call very much other than some squealing and saying, "OH MY GOSH!!" way too many times.
Over the next few days, Elisa negotiated the offer and I walked around in a state of euphoria. I was going to be a published author!!
Over the next months, I communicated with Luana about illustrators until we found a perfect match.
When Gillian said "Yes", I
was almost as excited as the day we got the offer! Her work is incredible, and everyone should check out more of it here!
The contract was negotiated and I signed in March 2022.
Now, we work on making this book a reality. It has been such a crazy process of ups and downs and waiting, but I know Girls Belong In Space was worth it. And I can't wait to share it with you!!
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading about my journey to becoming a published author!!
Be well, my friends!!
Looking forward to adding Girls to our home library!
Congratulations! You're my inspiration to dream on!!!