#14Debuts Day 6: Danielle L. Jensen and Stolen Songbird

We’ve all heard stories about authors who wrote a book, sent out a couple of queries, got picked up by a major agent, and signed a huge publishing deal (after an auction) within a week of going on submission. We’ve also heard stories of authors who have twenty finished manuscripts in their electronic desk drawer, but never a book deal have they found.

My story falls somewhere in the middle.

I’m going to skip the particulars of why I started writing and those early struggles, and jump right to the point of having my first finished manuscript that I was convinced was ready for publication (spoiler alert: I was wrong).  I sent my first query letter out on April 1, 2009 for an adult epic fantasy novel, and WOOP! had my first partial request a couple days later.

I was quite convinced that this was it, but two weeks later I got a form rejection. You can imagine how well I took it. HOWEVER, I kept sending out query letters, revised the manuscript, wrote the sequel to the novel, went to the Backspace conference, etc. But I had pretty much zero luck. So I started working on another book, this time a YA post-apocalyptic novel. I had lots and lots of full requests for this novel based on queries and pitch contests, but every one of those agents rejected it. All for different reasons. While I was going through that process, I started working on a YA fantasy novel about trolls. This would have been in 2010. It took me until the fall of 2011 to finish drafting and polishing the novel before I deemed it ready. I then sent a bunch of queries out into the world.

All were rejected.

So I went back to revising, and while I was doing that, I entered MSFV’s Baker’s Dozen contest. Low and behold, my little manuscript was aggressively bid on and won by my now-agent, Tamar Rydzinski. She read the manuscript within the week, then sent me an email saying that she really liked it, but that there were a bunch of things that she thought needed to be changed. She invited me to make the revisions and resubmit in the future. This was December of 2011.

University, life, lack of creativity, and my ego muddied the writing waters for me in the first part of 2012, and I didn’t get back to her with a revised manuscript until that summer. It was around that time that I really began questioning whether publication was ever going to happen to me – it was without a doubt the lowest moment of my writing career. BUT, in August of 2012, I got THE CALL offering me representation. A week later, I was signed. Then began the revisions…

FIVE months and SEVEN rounds of revisions later, STOLEN SONGBIRD (under a different title) went out on submission in January 2013. It sold to my wonderful editor, Amanda Rutter of Strange Chemistry, in March 2013. A few months later, I learned that it would be published April 1, 2014. Which you may have noticed is exactly five years after I sent out my first query letter.

April 1 has come and gone, and I’d like to thank everyone for helping me welcome STOLEN SONGBIRD into the world.