The Road To Valoren

[Note from Diana: Today, we have a special guest blog from Julie Leto, author of PHANTOM PLEASURES. Keep reading to see who won yesterday’s giveaway and for another opportunity to enter!]

First, want to thank Diana for the opportunity to hijack her blog for a day. The release of PHANTOM PLEASURES is a really big deal for me because it has been a long time coming. Most writers expect a two or three year delay between story conception and publication, but how about fifteen years? That’s stretching it, even for me.

I started writing seriously in 1987 when, after much too much wine, a friend and I decided to write a historical romance. Even the next morning, we thought it was a good idea and proceeded to start researching, pre-Google. Oh, the hours we spent in special collections in the library. Oh, the money we spent on research books! After about four months of research, we started writing and a year later, had a completed novel.

It never sold and trust me when I tell you that the World of Letters is better off for it.

We wrote one more historical romance together and then after writing a few chapters of a third, decided our friendship would be better served if we didn’t write together anymore. She went on to pursue her dream of becoming a caterer while I continued writing.

I futzed around with many different story ideas in many different subgenres of romance until I finally got the idea for a story about a ghost on a haunted island. At the time, Silhouette was publishing a line called Shadows, which featured paranormal and non-paranormal stories in the vein of Nine Coaches Waiting, dark, romantic gothic stories set in the present day. I tailored the book to the line and finished it. After going through the query process, I had an editor who wanted to read it. I also placed in a contest where the senior editor (Leslie Wainger) requested the manuscript. I sent it in, very heartened. The editor sent me back a 13 page revision letter.

Now, you’d think this was bad news, but I’d been in the biz long enough to know it was not. An editor doesn’t spend the time writing a 13 page revision letter unless she was seriously interested. I called her. We chatted and all sounded well. She really liked the sexiness and the setting and the characters, but could I tweak a, b, c through z? No problem.

I did every revision. Checked them off like a good little doobie. I sent it in as quickly as possible…though it likely took me at least three months because I had another day job and a night job back then. I waited. I waited and waited and waited. Then finally, about three-four months later, I got a phone message from my husband, who home for lunch, called to tell me I had a package from Silhouette.

A package. No a phone call. A package. Again, I’d been in the biz long enough to know this was NOT good.

He read me the rejection over the phone. That self-initiated act of cruelty took all of two minutes. It was a form rejection.

Now, I’m a fairly thick-skinned person. I can take just about anything this industry can dish out, but I have to tell you, this one nearly did me in.

A form rejection? After all that work? And not even signed personally by the editor who’d requested all the changes! Or the Senior Editor who’d asked to see the book!

Long story short (too late, you say!) the line had folded. The editor who’d requested the changes had been reassigned or left (I can’t remember…I just know she’s an agent now) and the senior editor had moved on as well. I was likely a victim of very bad timing.

Or good timing, depending on your perspective.

Because while I tried several other times to sell that manuscript to other publishers, nothing came of it and the very next manuscript I wrote was the first one I sold. Then, twenty books later, I decided that the pendulum of reader interest had swung sufficiently to the paranormal enough for me to drag out that old story again.

Only it no longer existed, except in my mind. Not even the diskettes remained. I had a hard copy of the first three chapters, but that was all.

So I started from scratch. And man, am I ever glad I did!

So much came back to me–and that has to mean something. The hero, the setting, the castle, the curse. The heroine, whose name had to change because I’d used her original name in another story, grew into someone a lot less tragic and a lot ballsier, though her profession and motivation remained the same. But now that I’d written over twenty books, my skill set had grown into such that I could really weave a more complex story into the simple tale I’d written previously. The villain totally changed. I added secondary characters. I changed the time period for the brothers…heck, the hero didn’t even have brothers before! And I added the gypsy theme because I’d learned writing my RITA nominee, “Surrender,” and the companion book, UNDENIABLE, that I really loved gypsies and gypsy lore.

Fifteen years later, a story that haunted me is finally hitting the stands.

And by the way, Valoren (as referenced in the title) is the name of the fictional gypsy colony in PHANTOM PLEASURES. If you’d like to read the opening scene that takes place in 1747 Valoren, click here. You can follow that link to seven more excerpts. By then, you’ll know if the book interests you.

And thanks again, Diana, for the opportunity to guest blog with you!
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Diana again. Thank you, Julie, for coming onto my blog. I love this book, and I love the story behind it, too. It’s one of perseverance, ingenuity, and being in the right place at the right time!

Now, the giveaways. Yesterday’s winner is KAREN LINGEFELT. Karen, email me, if by some strange change, you do not already have a copy of this book.

Another chance to win today! Leave a note in the comments about a time that you stuck with something and it paid off!