My Journey to Publication Part Two

Surprise! I sold a non-fiction book!

Tea: Iced Lychee Green Tea sans Boba, 70% sugar, and less ice.

I never intended to write non-fiction. It wasn’t even on my radar. Non-fiction was something that historians, reality TV stars, actors, reporters, and people with credentials or a following on social media wrote. I wrote fiction or was trying to anyway. Young Adult, Chick-lit, women’s fiction, romance, you name a genre; I probably have a manuscript sitting on a hard drive or a disk somewhere (this was before thumb drives). The only genre I didn’t try was science fiction or fantasy.

Scandalous Women was born out of my desire to blog about something different and share the stories of all the fascinating women I’d been reading about for years. I also started the blog to impress a guy. I don’t recommend this. The guy in question was intellectual; he was studying to be a psychoanalyst, and he’d even written a non-fiction book about Freud! I felt significantly less than around him, which should have been my first clue that we weren’t meant to be. Starting a blog about women’s history was an excellent way to show him that I wasn’t such a lightweight in the brains department (again, I don’t recommend this).

Thus, Scandalous Women was created. FYI - the blog lasted longer than my so-called relationship with the intellectual and was more satisfying, too! I was blogging for me at first, not for an audience. I was surprised that anyone besides my friends was reading the blog. This was way back in 2007 when blogging was still in its infancy. I blogged about women that had some name recognition, but what I loved was writing about women that no one knew about: courtesans like Cora Pearl and Lola Montez, royal mistresses like Barbara Palmer and Nell Gwynn, Wallis Simpson, Messalina and Agrippina, Boudica. The list goes on.

It wasn’t until I was laid off from my day job at the end of 2008 that I seriously considered turning Scandalous Women into a book. The only problem was that I had no idea how to write a non-fiction book. So I did what I always do when I don’t know something: I typed in ‘how to write non-fiction book proposal’ and made a list of the books that came up and several websites. I also had a friend who had recently sold a non-fiction book, and she graciously allowed me to look at that proposal.

I should also mention that I had met an agent through the local RWA chapter who was interested in my writing, although she wasn’t keen on my previous manuscripts. She was the first agent and the only agent I sent the proposal to. Again, I was lucky she loved the proposal and was willing to take me on as a client. I should clarify that I had been writing for ten years without selling a single manuscript. For a while, I used to pray that I would stop having so many ideas I wanted to write if it didn’t look like I would get published.

Scandalous Women didn’t sell right away. I worked for eight months on the proposal and the two sample chapters before my agent sent them to publishers. In July 2009, I sold my first book, an imprint of Penguin, to Perigee Books, and then the real work began. I had nine months to write the book, mini-biographies of thirty-five women. Although I had written about several women, such as Anne Boleyn, Boudica, and Cleopatra, on the blog, I rewrote all those chapters from scratch. In March 2010, I turned in the manuscript. After receiving my editor's revision letter, I had about two months to turn around the edits. There was a second round of edits, going through the proofs, and then finally, in March 2011, Scandalous Women was published.

It would be another ten years before I published another book, but that is a story for another day.

What I’m reading:

Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl by Mary Mahoney & Allison Horrocks - I was too old for American Girl dolls when they first appeared in 1986, and I was so jealous. What I wouldn’t have given to have historically accurate dolls to play with! Mahoney & Horrocks hosts a popular podcast about the American Girl phenomenon, and this book is a great companion piece.

What I’m listening to:

You Must Remember This: Karina Longworth’s podcast is fantastic if you are interested in film history. Her most recent series is on Erotic 90’s movies.

What I’m watching:

The Brothers Sun: Michelle Yeoh is a goddess, so I had to watch when I heard that she was starring in this series for Netflix. When the head of a Taiwanese triad is shot by an assassin, his eldest son, Charles, heads to Los Angeles to protect his mother and brother, who's been completely sheltered from the truth of his family until now.