It has been a long time coming, but this year I finally got a book contract *swoons to the floor*

My deal consists of a 3 book contract with Harper Voyager UK. Ahhhhh, pinch me, pinch me! Seriously! I still can’t believe how awesome that is. If somebody had told me I’d accomplish this when I started writing 7 years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and said “Get outta here!”

Yet, the hard, hard, hard work has paid off, and here I am with the first book in my latest YA Sci-Fi, Ignite the Shadows, slated to come out August 2015 and the other two yet-untitled books releasing in August 2016 and August 2017.

Now to the how . . .

This all started in October 2012 when I saw a tweet saying that Harper Voyager was going to open submissions—first time in ten years—to unagented authors. Me, me, I thought at the time. Though, not anymore. Halleluiah!

So, I hurried over to check out the post and since I had a manuscript that fit the guidelines, I sent Ignite the Shadows on. With that done . . . I promptly proceeded to forget all about it. Yep, that’s right. I submitted my ms, then never looked back, never checked the sporadic status updates the folks at Harper were blogging about. Not even once. Not that I didn’t think my ms had a chance. I’d just endured that much rejection.

Rejection the ugly, muze bashing monster . . .

Yep, rejection made me apathetic. Once I lost count of how many of them I’d gotten—both from agents and publishers—I just stopped holding my breath and believing it would ever happen. Send and forget became my coping mechanism to all the angst of waiting. There’s only so many times one can get excited about a full request to then wait and wait and wait . . . check one’s email and bite one’s nails and wait and wait for . . . a rejection or worse . . . no answer at all. Disheartening, to say the least.

And oh my, am I grateful for my Send and Forget approach? Because, I tell you, if I had known that—for one year and five months—my manuscript was under consideration, I would have died of congestive stress disorder, or something equally horrible.

Instead, on February 24, 2014, I opened my gmail account and received the most amazing surprise of my life: an email from my now editor Natasha Bardon, telling me she was interested in my book.

Understandably, I screamed.

Understandably, my family thought I’d fallen down the steps and cracked my skull open.

Now, I run around smiling like an idiot every time I remember that my novels are being published by HarperCollins.

Yep, dreams do come true and—for someone with my background—that is a HUGE deal.