Goddess of Love Brings Book Contract

I submitted my paranormal romance Wytchfae to my first choice publisher on May 17. An acknowledgement reply came right away and instructed if I hadn’t heard back in four weeks to make contact again. By June 8, three excruciating weeks had gone by. I realize three weeks is a short time, and most publishers take months to get back to a writer. However, I had met and pitched the novel to this publisher at a recent writer’s conference and remembered her saying that the current turnaround time was one to two weeks. So why hadn’t I heard anything?

Maybe submissions had inundated the publishing house and I should practice patience. Maybe my gut feeling was way off base and my dream publisher hated the book. Maybe my novel sucked eggs. Still, I found myself checking my smart phone every five minutes to see if the publisher had sent an email. Never mind that the phone chimes at me when an email arrives. What if the chime went silent for some reason?

This particular week my precious Snickerdoodles, age five and two, graced me with their loving and energetic presence, and we had fun playing, reading, coloring, and watching Kick Buttowski and the boys’ favorite superheroes.

During a slowdown period on June 8 when munchy imbibing absorbed the boys, I took another look at my email inbox on the phone. For some reason, heaven knows why, I decided to search for my original submission email. Searching by the publisher’s name, the original email came up—along with two more messages with the same subject heading. Huh?

The second email turned out to be the acknowledgement reply the publisher had sent on the day I submitted the manuscript. Okay, well, not to worry, it hadn’t been four weeks yet.

Peering at the third email, I saw it was another reply to my original message. Had I somehow forwarded a duplicate message to myself? Heart thumping, I opened it to see the words, “pleased and delighted to announce that we have accepted Wytchfae for publication.” The date? June 6— two days before. Two days!

It had languished in my inbox for two days, aggregated and hidden under the submission email, until something (we can call it a little voice, can’t we?) told me to search for the original message.

That’s how the Goddess of Love brought me a book contract. And how Wytchfae’s acceptance email came during the Venus’ transit of the sun but remained mysteriously unseen by human eyes until two days later.