Category: new story

THE GOOD NEWS!

Last month, on September 23, the day after I had a very good birthday celebration, our home phone rang during dinner. We constantly get phone solicitor calls at our house, and I assumed this would be one of those. My husband Bob picked it up and said hello.

After a second, he said, “May I ask who’s calling?”

Another few seconds, and he handed the phone to me. “Amy Wilson from something press.”

I wondered what this was about. I took the phone. “Hello?”

The woman introduced herself to me as well and then said, “You know, some information I just think ought not be in an email—the phone can be more personal. I read your book, Looking for Home, and I love it! Would you like to publish it with me?”

I sat back in my chair, absolutely floored. It had taken a solid year to sell Hurricane Baby: Stories. I’d been querying Looking for Home for not quite two months—and here was an offer! Was she serious?!

So I started thinking aloud—I asked what the terms were, how was the contract set up, etc. She gave me some information about that. I asked if I could have the rest of the week to check with other publishers who still had the book to see if they wanted to counteroffer, and she agreed to that. She said she would get a hard-copy contract drawn up, sent to me, I could look over it, and then if it was satisfactory, I could sign it and send it back.

During the whole time we were talking, my mind was yammering away in the background, “You sold your second book. You sold your second book. YOU SOLD YOUR SECOND BOOK!”

After we finished talking, I looked over at Bob, who was looking at me with an expectant look on his face. I said, “Well, I just sold Looking for Home.”

I told him what she had said about the contract. So we waited.

She emailed me on Thursday, October 2, that she’d mailed the contract in a priority envelope. I received it the next Monday, looked it over, and then sent it back with my signature.

So we’ve been exchanging emails with questions and answers and details ever since.

Looking for Home is now under contract with Red Dirt Press of Oklahoma with a tentative release date of October 2026!

Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive of my work as I embark on this new author journey! Come on along for the ride!

Meeting the Moment

I’ve started wondering what exactly I need to be writing about.

I’ve got a novel idea that excited me for a while.

But the wackier this country is getting, the more I wonder if I need to be using my voice, small as it is, to do more than just fret about that.

I was schooled on the idea of journalists as objective observers of the actions of the body politic–good, bad, or indifferent. I tried to embody that in my writing, giving readers facts to let them make their own conclusions. This tack was pretty easy when I was doing features coverage: who, what, when, where, why, and how pretty much covered it.

Then I got into investigative reporting on mental health issues in my state–a topic very close to home given my diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I wrote and wrote and wrote–exposed, exposed, and exposed–and exactly nothing changed in practical terms. A few new laws got passed about training more people and setting up a new task force to replace the last task force, but that was all.

And I got burned out.

I could not see how someone involved in mental health matters could have read my work and not come away with a resolve to do what they could to change matters. But it seems they could.

I had been raising awareness for almost twenty years. I was tired of raising awareness. I wanted action. And it wasn’t forthcoming.

Now this country is on a collision course with history. I’m in the catbird seat to watch it–older, wiser, jaded, smart enough to able to see clearly through the smoke and mirrors, and seriously wondering where all my ideals went.

If we are no longer a free society, then what are we?

I’ve skated through life being comfortable with my political ideology as a moderate–suspicious of extremists of any flavor. I still feel that people can be trusted to make good decisions when given all the facts. But the very concept of what constitutes a fact is under attack from every conceivable direction these days.

What should we, as writers, do? It no longer seems to matter if we expose corruption as there’s no guarantee it will ever be prosecuted. No one seems to be interested in reading or hearing about government malfeasance unless the content already fits their own narrative.

I believe the answer is to write anyway. At least you can go to bed and sleep soundly, knowing you did your part.

I don’t know what this means for me yet. But I’m ready to find out.

Mississippi Book Festival 2025

I went again to this year’s book festival and had a wonderful time–I met MJ there and we walked around saying hello to everyone I knew. I also met several new people that I had not before, like the folks in charge of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, the University of Southern Mississippi Creative Writing program, the future Greenfield Residency program, and the Hancock County Library programs. Really neat organizations that I hope can continue on even as support for the arts is dwindling here.

I’m feeling at loose ends. My enthusiasm for my new manuscript suddenly disappeared last week. It was very disturbing. And I’m not quite able to figure out how to find it again. I may just have to do some for-my-eyes-only writing to figure out my why and what I actually want to do with the project. I may wait until I sell my current manuscript to start back on it in earnest since the energy is not there at this point. We will see.

But one of the sessions yesterday was very illuminating on what may have happened–the moderator, Steve Almond, said that you need to write what you’re obsessed about. When I first wrote the manuscript, I had an obsession–to explore the relationship between these two characters and see where it would go. But now I’m turning it into a very different book–about how the female lead overcomes when her life suddenly falls apart. I need to figure out why readers should care about this character. So I think that’s where I’m going to direct my efforts.

Happy writing, everybody!

NEW ADVENTURE!

I finished my first draft of Looking for Home at some point between Thanksgiving and December 1, 2024 (I went back and looked), After January 1, I reread it and did a revision. In February 2025 I sent to beta readers, then a line editor worked it over, and then I swapped work with another professional writer, and she made some very good notes.

All of that feedback needed to be factored in and folded into the narrative, straightening out the chronology and cleaning up finer plot points. As well as cutting the wordcount down a bit. And today I restyled the first few paragraphs to clean up the last of those wordcount cuts, and I am DONE with Looking for Home, and I think it’s ready to query!

It has been quite the journey. I was not as driven writing this book, and it took twice as long to complete. I froze up on the regular, wondering how I could pull such a feat off again. I fought through the grief of losing my mom and quitting my job. And these last couple of weeks, the revisions just seemed too overwhelming to take on.

My writing buddy Shannon told me, “Just work on one page. That’s all. Then try to revise another page tomorrow.”

That did the trick. I got my confidence back, and it was off to the races. I just finished writing the last revised paragraph a few hours ago.

Next is drawing up the first list of publishers to query and seeing what happens!

But that will be tomorrow. Today I will celebrate that Carlton and Merrilyn and Cassie got their happy ending. As they should have. Stay tuned!

I Need Gas in the Tank

My creative imagination for Looking for Home is just about exhausted.

I have line-edits to work through still. And another reader I hope to hear from by the end of July. So I’m waiting on the edits (which I can probably knock out in a day or so) until I hear from her.

I’m already moving my thoughts to the query materials and compiling a list of who to send it to. I’m going to follow a similar procedure to make those decisions that I used with Hurricane Baby–presses that are interested in Southern stories. I don’t think I’m going to send to university presses this time, though. This book, while historical, isn’t about a real historical event like Hurricane Baby was. So i’m not sure what would be the angle for a university press. I may send to those in Tennessee, where the book is set. But I’m going to have to think about that.

Ten days and I head into my very busy month for Hurricane Baby. I’m looking forward to everything, especially my trip upstate to Starkville and Columbus for a signing and for the Possumtown Book Fest, now in its second year. Hopefully I get to meet some people in person that I only know by reputation as well as catch up with friends and colleagues from MUW.

Going to continue thinking ahead and try to organize myself for all of this. Hope some of you can make the events and enjoy yourselves!

New Idea!

So I’ve settled what I’m going to work on for my next writing project.

I wrote out a thought experiment in the late 2000s–could you call a extramarital relationship cheating if the pair never actually had physical relations? What would such a relationship look like? And what would be the fallout if the relationship was revealed?

Now as a society, we have a term for this kind of relationship–an emotional affair–and many writers have explored the ramifications of such relationships in both fiction and nonfiction. So even though it’s tightly written and tightly plotted, I don’t think this story would work for today’s readers.

So I got to thinking. How could I change it to make it more interesting? I knew I didn’t want to do a romance manuscript–that’s not really where my interests lie. The story was dual point-of-view; I could choose to center the male main character, Steven Burr, or the female main character, Melissa Benedict.

As I reread the work, I realized that Steven experienced no growth during the story as I had it, while Melissa did. So I decided to center Melissa’s story as one of her own transformation as she got older and more experienced at life.

But that would be kind of a plain story, too–a lot of that kind of work is out in the world as well. What kind of spin could I put on it to make it more mine and more Southern Gothic?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Cassandra myth–the prophetess blessed with knowledge of the future but cursed to always have her pronunciations ignored by the people around her. What if Melissa encountered such a person–and her life was upended? Would Melissa passively accept what’s happening to her–or would she seize what control she could muster over her life?

So. The die is cast. I’ll start in September, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

Rest

Rest. That’s what I tried doing this week after I finished this third draft. I mostly succeeded.

I read. Some nights I went to bed early. Other nights I participated in chats with friends.

One night I wrote out a very basic note on the plot of the chapter that I’m adding to the middle section. I plan to start on that tomorrow night and hopefully finish a good draft within a week.

But I can tell I’m getting close to done with the writing of this book.

How do I know? I’m not thinking about the characters all the time. The impetus to rush to the computer and type on the draft has lessened. I’m starting to turn my mind to what comes next–another go-around of edits, perfecting a few more places I already know need work, making sure all the little details get cleaned up in preparation for going out to the wide world of querying.

Hopefully I can have a few days to sit with the manuscript at the end of July and marvel that I managed to do it again. A whole other book. YAY!

Beta Readers Round One

So I heard back from several beta readers on Looking for Home. The verdicts were interesting.

Most of them agreed that minor characters in particular definitely needed more development. I had already realized this fact myself, so hearing it from readers was affirming–I wasn’t just being overly critical of myself. So now I am working at deepening roles of many of my side characters so that they get at least a bit of a semblance of a story arc.

As far as plot, the readers were almost unanimous that the pacing and the surprises were on point. One reader said it started off entirely too slowly for him. So I plan to go over that part carefully and see if there are parts I can cut, rearrange, what have you in order to not spend so much time setting the scene.

Almost everyone agreed that the story was easy to follow. Events made sense in the context of the story and were consistent for how I had set the world. One reader, however, was really unable to read past the heart of the story in the first third of the book. She told me she didn’t read stories that had that kind of situation as a plot element. She gave me her feedback on what she had read, and it was very insightful and useful. I apologized to her for the book being upsetting–and that I appreciated her candor and courage.

So now I have all kinds of ideas running around in my head for improvements. We will see where this goes. Next deadline is mid-to-end of May so I can turn it over to an editor friend of mine. Wish me well!

The Many Sides of Terror

I’ve written here a few times about terror and writing and publishing. The terror of people actually reading your work, the terror of writer’s block and of never being able to write again, the fear of presenting your work–all of that is real.

Today’s terror is whether I can make lightning strike twice. I have a work-in-progress out for beta reading, and I’ll do a rewrite after that, then send it out for a deeper reading to get the opinion of other writers on my text. Then probably another rewrite.

But what about after that? I go back to the rounds of sending it off for queries. I don’t have any kind of deal with my current publisher to submit it to them first, though I probably will do that once they open for queries again. I have a publisher I met last year at a conference that’s interested in it, so I’m definitely going to send there first.

But what if they don’t like it? What if I haven’t sold enough of Hurricane Baby? What if, what, if, what if?

I’m learning to ignore the “What if?” question. It doesn’t do me any good to ruminate over that. All I can do is work to advance the book and get it in as many hands as possible. I have to write the best book I can right now and ready it for querying with as much care and concern as I can muster up.

What about writing terrorizes you? List it in the comments. Happy writing!