Tag: submitting to small presses

Regrouping

So what’s ahead for me?

I didn’t schedule much for the first quarter of 2026 since I thought I’d be working on publicity for Looking for Home.

So I do have a few events upcoming for Hurricane Baby but not nearly as many as I did for the end of this past year.

Next event is HOMEGROWN: A Storied Exchange on the Gulf Park campus of University of Southern Mississippi the last weekend of January. My part of the now four-day event is on Saturday, January 31, when I am on a panel of three Madville authors and our publisher talking about Madville, small press publishing, and our particular work ad publishing journeys. I will be in and out of events all day and hope to see a lot of friends and colleagues as I’m there.

February is open so far; I hope to ramp back up doing any new writing and querying during that time. I still have my chapbook on submission and will be looking at other possibilities for submitting Looking for Home some new places I haven’t tried yet.

March brings a good event around–the Mississippi Philogical Association is meeting in Hattiesburg at William Carey University. I read Hurricane Baby in public for the first time at the 2024 MPA meeting; I still plan to read from Looking for Home even though I’m not launching it that month like I originally hoped. Lots of familiar faces will be there as well.

Then in April is an event I have been hoping to have ever since I got word that Hurricane Baby was going to be published–the Price Caldwell Reading Series is bringing me to Mississippi State University to talk to students about the book in a graduate workshop that morning then do a public reading from the book that night. Dr Caldwell was my favorite professor at MSU when I was a student there, and reading in his memory is going to be quite the honor.

So I am moving along. Playing the long game. And though I’m probably in the fourth quarter of my writing life, the clock just started, and I have a fresh set of downs to work with! Looking ahead to what’s in store for me. Happy writing for you all!

News

I have an update after the holidays–my book deal for Looking for Home has fallen through. The press is shutting down, and the publisher wrote me a message saying that it certainly wasn’t anything about my book that caused it–she is just having to close up shop for personal reasons.

I don’t quite know how to feel. I’m disappointed, of course, but she has returned all the rights to me, so I am free to shop it around again. But I’m not sure when I will plan to do that. I’m not licking my wounds over it; I feel strangely optimistic that if it’s meant to sell, it will again. But I’m not in some big rush to make it so.

So we will see what happens. It doesn’t feel like a setback; it feels more like a chance to breathe. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Got Some Good News

Back in June of this year, I entered a chapbook contest. A chapbook is a very short work of prose or poetry, about 20-40 pages worth. I had put this chapbook together a while back, but when I saw this new contest, I revised my little five-story manuscript, retitled it, and sent it in.

Finally heard back last week–I’m not one of the finalists that was sent to the final judge, but I was in the group they selected the finalists from. That was encouraging!

So I think for the next little while I am going to make revising and submitting this chapbook around my next creative endeavor. I have a list of 12 outlets to send to, spaced out from now until September 2026. I can have something to work on while I try to sort out what I want to do next with my third book–do I want to continue to revise what I have, rewrite the whole thing from scratch, move on to another manuscript, or what. Give my overstimulated brain a little time to relax from creation.

Done with events this year, but I start right back up again in January 2026 with three speaking engagements. That’s good. Soon I’ll be getting cover designs for Looking for Home, and all of that excitement will be in motion. I feel good about this plan to submit while the planning for Looking for Home is going on.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support of my work and my stories!

Candy-Store Problem

A candy-store problem is when you have a lot of choices, and all of them are good–or at least not bad.

I have four ideas for books–a paranormal novel, a double murder mystery with a twist, a father-son relationship novel, and a mother-daughters novel. I have been trying to work on the paranormal novel as it’s an old manuscript that would need to be rewritten, as is the double murder mystery. The other two are fully outlined from beginning to end.

The murder mystery feels the most like a conventional genre book and the most commercial. The paranormal one feels like another small press book with the twists and turns it takes. The other two feel more conventional as well.

When I set back out doing this, I decided I would rewrite the four older manuscripts first, querying indie and small presses for the first three (Hurricane Baby, Looking for Home, and the paranormal book) and query agents for the murder mystery to see if I could get a Big 5 deal. Then I’d write the other two from scratch and maybe be of age to retire if I wanted to or try to think up new ideas if I didn’t.

Now I am wondering whether that’s the proper path to take.

But at least my choices are all good because they all involve writing!

So please think about me in the next few weeks as I chew over my choices. Happy writing to you all!

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!

First Nibble!

This morning, I got my first bite on my queries—a press sent me an email to submit my entire manuscript of Looking for Home. It’s a group in Oklahoma specializing in Southern literature. So mine may be right up their alley. Or not. We will have to see.

I sent three more queries around the first of the month–another press opens on September 15, and another one does on September 30. Then three more in October and four in November. The path just keeps rolling forward!

In other news, my last events went off without a hitch. Each one was fun and informative, and I tried to make the best case for the book I could in each interview. But the best marketing effort for the month was definitely me talking about networking helping my author journey on Jane Friedman’s site. Drove a lot of traffic to my blog and a lot of orders to my publisher. So that was amazing.

I’ve gone ahead and started my third book manuscript, with a working title of What Lies Ahead. I’m reworking yet another old manuscript from when I was writing back in the late 2000s. I’m moving very slowly writing the new first chapter that will hopefully set the tone for the entire rest of the book. I’m looking forward to feeling like I have a handle on the material. Because right now I don’t. 🙂

Oh well. We will see how it goes. Happy reading and writing everyone!

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!

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!