Twelve years, I suppose but I was actively trying to sell for only about four of those years. I completed my first manuscript in 2003 (after working on it for about 10 months). When that didnt sell, I got sidetracked by marriage and children for a few years. In 2008, I tried again and spent a year writing a second manuscript. When that book also didnt sell, I put the writing dream aside for a while as my husband and I started our second adoption. Then, in 2013, my sister Shirlee McCoy (who also writes for LIS) insisted I enter the Happily Editor After contest. Undercurrent took seven months to complete, and I got The Call in February 2014.
2. WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER?
My grandmother bought me a little diary for my tenth birthday, and thats when I first started experimenting with writing. Within a couple of years, I started writing poetry and essays and sending them to magazine editors. When I saw my first poem in print, my writers journey was set.
3. What inspired your book?
When brainstorming ideas for the Happily Editor After pitch, I wanted to put my characters in a setting where they had no escape and where they would have a difficult time getting help from police. The cruise ship idea stemmed from my first (and, so far, only) cruising experience, when I went on a girls weekend with my mom and three sisters in 2012. When I started researching crime on cruise ships, I was fascinated (and creeped out) by what I found. I decided a cruise was the perfect place to set a story of suspense and romance, and the idea for Undercurrent blossomed from there.
4. What did you learn after becoming published that you wish you'd known beforehand?
Editors are looking for intriguing stories and writers who are willing to work at their craft--not necessarily perfect manuscripts. After my first two manuscripts were rejected, I definitely lost some confidence and courage. When I sold Undercurrent, I still needed to make substantial revisions, but my editor, Shana Asaro, was able to see promise in the original work and gave me the opportunity to reshape and refine it. Realizing that editors dont require perfection has definitely given me more courage to move forward and pursue the writing career Id like to have.
5. What is the best piece of writing advice you've ever received?
A professor in graduate school once read a short nonfiction piece that Id written and said it was the perfect example of throat clearing. Obviously, this was not a compliment. I had a tendency (and still do) to set the story up with a lot of background before getting to the meat of it. For journalism, this doesnt work at all, especially since the pieces are short. For LIS, throat clearing also doesnt work because readers want to get right to the suspense. As a rule of thumb, my critique partners seem bent on slashing my first few paragraphs, no matter how attached Ive become to the words.
6. IF YOU COULD HAVE DINNER WITH ANYONE, WHO WOULD IT BE?
The Bronte sisters--three writer sisters who wrote and critiqued together over 150 years ago. They used to write and critique around a table in their home, and I imagine they would often find themselves in hysterics like my sisters and I do when reading one anothers drafts. Since two of my sisters (Shirlee McCoy and Mary Ellen Porter) are also writers, I think it would be fascinating to sit down with another trio of writing sisters and compare notes.
7. WHAT ARE YOU READING NOW?
I usually have two books going at once one fiction and one nonfiction. Right now Im reading The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.
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