Everybody loves these stories -- especially aspiring authors waiting for their own Call from an editor or agent. Mine was pretty standard. But how I got there required some changes on my part, so let me start from the beginning...

I got into romance writing because I had a high-powered creative writing degree hanging there, useless, on the wall and I was getting bored with my job at a software company. I had made some major life changes and felt ready to tackle something else new. Why not try writing commercial fiction?

It took me about a year and a half (during which time I quit my job and started writing full-time) to finally produce a solid Silhouette Intimate Moments. I floundered around in backstory, down rabbit trails, with senseless subplots, until I was soundly spanked in the West Houston Emily contest in 2002. (And a well-deserved spanking it was!) That convinced me to go study SIMs in-depth, which I did for a solid month -- graphing out the opening, measuring the backstory, POV scenes, where the turning points occurred, how the dark moment and climax shaped up, how long the denouement took.

The first chapter of the revised IN TOO DEEP then went into the Bay Area Writers League Novice Competition in the spring of 2003. The finalist judging editor was Harlequin's Stacy Boyd, and I had high hopes of getting my work in front of her. It turned out IN TOO DEEP won 1st place, and when I spoke with Stacy at the BAWL Conference in May, she suggested I target Bombshell because my heroine was so strong.

I ended up with a revision letter on IN TOO DEEP (not Bombshellish enough), but THE ORCHID HUNTER was already percolating in my head and I sent that in to Stacy in December 2004. Got a revision letter on that, too, then went to work rewriting. That effort netted me The Call on April 28th, 2004 at 3:51 P.M. (CST) -- not that I remember the exact date or anything!

I was totally thrilled and did what everyone tells you not to do: I said, "Sure, let's do it!" when Stacy made the offer. No suave, cool author here -- just a giddy, excited one!

Good luck to you in getting your own Call!