How I got a two-book deal

The short version

In case you missed it, Sing the Night comes out with 8th Note Press in 2025. (You can add it on goodreads!) I’ve been trying to write this post for a few weeks, but it’s hard to uncrystallize the moment and capture the whole story. This is the short version, believe it or not. Here is the labyrinthine journey that got me to this moment.

I wrote my first novel when I was in 7th grade. It was horrible, but it showed me what was possible. I wrote a lot through out high school. I was part of an online writing community called Writer’s Window, where I learned the value of feedback, visibility, and community. Despite this, I decided to major in music in college, much to the protests of my family. I went in for vocal performance, got burned out, switched to composition, and took a creative writing class the end of my junior year.

It was like breathing for the first time after drowning.

I leaned into this joy and minored in English. I started working on my first novel as an adult. It was a terrible YA portal fantasy with a lot of fairy cats. I rewrote the beginning 100 times while producing short story and getting into mommy blogging (lol). At this point, I’d gotten married and had my first baby. I knew I wanted to explore more writing, so I applied to a single MFA program in 2013. If I was accepted, I would pursue writing professionally. If I wasn’t, I would dabble.

Reader, I got in.

And reader, the next day, I found out I was pregnant with my second child. Cue tears and stress and the kind reassurance from the program manager that I could have a baby in grad school. So I did. There was no better experience to sharpen me into the writer I am today. The mentorship, the community, the truffle fries all helped me become the writer I am today. I am so grateful for UCRPD MFA. I wrote three books in grad school. I finished that terrible portal fantasy and started on YA sci-fi. Right before my thesis quarter, I pitched my advisor a new idea. He encouraged me to write that book as my thesis. It was a YA contemporary fantasy about a girl without a heart who finds out she’s a changeling and that her heart’s in the fey underground called Hearts, Wings, and Nasty Things.

It got me my first agent with multiple offers after nine days of querying, before I even graduated from school. The agent I signed with was a big name. I did edits with her for three years (red flag!) before we went on sub. That book died on submission. I left her, mainly because our communication styles didn’t match. With great confidence, I went out with an Anne of Green Gables meets Howl’s Moving Castle YA fantasy called Soap & Sorcery. I had a lot of fulls, but that book didn’t sign.

This was 2018. I had pitched "The Phantom of the Opera” meets Count of Monte Cristo to an editor, back when HWNT was getting rejected. I sat down to write that book. It was weird and dark and explored all my favorite things: love triangles, mysterious strangers, deadly secrets, and complex magic systems. I could not be more excited.

I entered it into Pitch Wars 2019. It did not get selected. Rebecca Schaeffer, however, asked if she could chat with me about the concept. She gave me a glorious edit letter that helped me rework the concept. I started querying in earnest July 2020. By March 2021, I had three identical R&Rs in my inbox, all asking me to expand the worldbuilding.

So I paused querying and started editing. By June 2021, I was happy with the overhaul. I sent to the previous agents, and a few new ones.

Within a week, I had multiple offers.

I signed with my dream agent, Lauren Galit. She’s my literary soul mate, an excellent communicator, and an great editor. She pushes me to be better, and I am so grateful for everything she’s done. We edited and went out on sub June 2022. We got a splash of excited responses and can’t-wait-to-reads. I felt like I was finally closing in on the thing I had been fighting for for so long.

And then crickets, with an occasional “writing is love, send the next book” rejection.

I held onto hope like it was a vine keeping me anchored to a cliff. But each passing month, I felt myself slipping into despair. Was I really going to have another book die on submission? I focused on teaching creative writing and short stories and making silly tiktoks. I felt like a fraud, offering writing advice while my own book seemed unmarketable.

In 2023 I published 15+ short stories, essays, and poems. I worked on something new. My agent reached out to me spring of 2023 about two new presses, one of which was 8th Note Press. The internet was all abuzz about TikTok moving into publishing spaces, but I thought it was a brilliant move. They were both a little outside publishing norms but I was excited to see what was to come. They felt like Hail Mary passes, but hope remained.

It was October 2023 when I got the what I thought was the last rejection. I was in Utah visiting family when the e-mail came through. I was sitting a library, surrounded by books someone had loved enough to take a chance on, sure that I would never get there. I texted my husband that it was over. It was done.

“What about TikTok?” he said.

What about TikTok, indeed. I was out of hope at this point. We’d been on sub for a year and a half, and even with the extended reading times post-COVID, it just seemed impossible. Another book bites the dust. Another dream crushed. Another piece of my heart carved out and fed to crows.

But you already know how this story goes. You already know that I got the Call. I was actually sleeping for it, and had a text from my agent that just said, “Answer your phone, woman!”

I did. And here we are.

8th Note Press bought Sing the Night and the sequel, Elegy for a Dream. They were quick, communicative, and my book had a home at long last. My editor shares the same name as my main character. And the book—which has a music-based magic system, is being published with 8th Note Press. I am so proud of this book. I am so proud to be working with 8th Note Press and forging a new path in publishing.

To the people who read my work over and over this last decade, who fielded calls and talked me out of quitting and helped infuse me with joy, thank you. You know who you are. To my family, thank you for the love and support and never complaining when I disappeared into a story. It’s all for you. To the readers who are still here with me after this very, very long post, whether you are excited to read Sing the Night or are here scratching away at your own dream, thank you.

Writers, don’t give up. The only way you fail is if you give up. The world needs your story.