My journey to becoming an author – Jenny
Holiday
I decided to try to become a romance author
not long after I started reading romance. I was a late bloomer on the romance
front, though, not discovering romance novels until I was in my early 30s. This
was probably because I was a late bloomer on discovering Jane Austen (I blame
my high school. Hello, what kind of high school doesn’t make you read Pride and
Prejudice?!). After I gobbled up her books, I found my way to Regency romances.
My initial experience of the subgenre were the Harlequin historicals I got from
the library. When you read enough category romances from the same imprint, you
begin to understand the pattern. Now, I’m not knocking category romance here—I
write it, after all. But there are certain norms that govern category romance.
I hesitate to call it a formula, but…you know what I mean. It’s like you’re Neo
and you can suddenly see the Matrix.
I had always been pretty good at writing
according to formulas. By day, I worked as a PR writer. I’d had jobs that
required me to get a very specific message out in a very specific way: write a
magazine story about X that will make people donate money to our cause, that
sort of thing. And I loved this kind of work—I thrived on taking a problem and
solving it with words under a particular set of constraints.
You can probably see where I’m going here. At
some point, I looked up from a book I was reading and said, “How hard can this
be?”
Ha ha ha ha ha. Pride goeth before a fall
and all that.
It turned out I really didn’t know how to
write a romance novel. But I learned. I wrote a book that really wasn’t very
good, though I couldn’t see that at the time. Probably the smartest thing I did
was join a couple RWA chapters. Through RWA, I gained access to critique groups
and contests and classes that gradually chipped away at my ignorance—and I met
some critique partners who are with me to this day.
I also hired a freelance editor to take a
look at that first awful book because although my attempts to query agents were
getting me lots of requests for manuscripts, the book itself was being
universally rejected. I hoped this editor’s feedback would help me get the book
into good enough shape to get me an agent. Her honest counsel was probably one
of the critical turning points in my career. She helped me see why that book
wasn’t working, and gave me some tools to start fixing it. I rewrote the book,
but when I got to the end (again), I had to face the fact that, though
improved, this book never going to be good enough for a major publishing deal.
So I let it go and started over. It was hard at the time—I even passed up a
couple unsolicited offers from smaller publishers—but it was the smartest thing
I could have done.
After that, things were kind of…easy.
That’s the wrong word, obviously, because there was a ton of work involved, and
a little luck (and as with everything in publishing, every step took months if
not years). But I wrote a new book. That book got me exactly the kind of agent
I was looking for: someone who was into career-building and had the chops and
the connections to do major deals. That agent sold that book—and two sequels.
She also suggested I try writing a contemporary novel, which was not something
I had ever considered. So I wrote a contemporary book, and she sold that—and
two sequels.
And then? I guess I lived happily ever
after!
Jenny Holiday's Latest
Sleeping With Her Enemy by Jenny Holiday
Release date: February 23, 2015
Amy Morrison is supposed to be at her wedding. But when her
husband-to-be jilts her at the altar, a distraught Amy runs to the only place
she feels safe—her office. Besides, everyone who works on her floor is at her
wedding...except him. Dax Harris. Playboy, executive, and Amy's official office
enemy.
While he and Amy don't see eye-to-eye on the
best of days, Dax can't help but feel badly when he sees Amy mid-meltdown. Next
thing he knows, he's gotten her good and drunk, and they're making out like two
teenagers. And since neither of them want anything serious, why shouldn't they
be frenemies-with-benefits? Because there is no possible way they could ever
fall for each other...
About Jenny Holiday
Jenny Holiday started writing in fourth grade, when her
awesome hippie teacher, between sessions of Pete Seeger singing and
anti-nuclear power plant letter writing, gave the kids notebooks and told them
to write stories. Most of Jenny's featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or
serial killers who managed to murder everyone except her and her mom. She
showed early promise as a romance writer, though, because nearly every story
had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up to find that the story had been a
dream, and that her best friend, father, and sister had not, in fact, been
axe-murdered. From then on, she was always writing, often in her diary, where
she liked to decorate her declarations of existential angst with nail polish teardrops.
Eventually she channelled her penchant for scribbling into a more useful
format. After picking up a PhD in urban geography, she became a professional
writer, and has spent many years promoting research at a major university,
which allows her to become an armchair astronomer/historian/particle physicist,
depending on the day. Eventually, she decided to try her hand again at happy
endings--minus the bloodbaths. You can follow her twitter accounts @jennyholi
and @TropeHeroine or visit her on the web at jennyholiday.com.
Find Jenny Online
More on Jenny Holiday
No comments:
Post a Comment
This is an award free blog. Thank you for all of your comments.