But Knot for Me

 

BUT KNOT FOR ME  came out on Tuesday.  It is hard to believe that it is my 25^th book.  I remember when all I thought about was getting one book published.  I still come across the occasional rejection letter left from the past, though I finally threw most of them away a long time ago.  Why remind myself of being told no.

The one good thing about finding a rejection letter is that it reminds me that I didn’t let them make me give up.  There were successes along the way that helped keep me going.  Woman’s World published a number of my stories, I had an op ed piece in Woman’s Day.  There were some newspaper pieces and  a couple of screenplays that never got turned into films, but I got paid for one and won an award for another.

I heard myself introduced as an aspiring writer and I had a friend who joked my name was Betty Rejectman.  There was a literary agent I knew who sent me what he probably thought was a well- intentioned letter that said more or less than I should hang up my pen.

But still I persisted.  When my mother died, I had sort of a now or never moment about doing what I’d wanted to do for a long time.  Write a full length mystery.  It was the mid 90s and I wanted to be Jessica Fletcher.  It happened that a writing teacher I knew was holding a four week writers workshop at the local community college and it seemed like the perfect situation to start on that mystery.  At the time I belonged to a woman’s gym and had made a group of friends.  The gym was owned by a man who was not well liked and I put it all together and started writing.

When the workshop ended, the teacher continued it on at her house.  Having the feedback kept me going and I finished the manuscript just as she moved away.  Those of us left started our own group, helping each other.

Despite everyone liking the manuscript, it didn’t sell, but I got an agent.  It took a number of years and taking those characters and turning them into crocheters before I got the call from my agent that two publishers wanted the series.

And now I’m writing my 26^th book, the third book in the Writer for Hire series.  There’s something else I want to work on when I have the time and there are more of the Yarn Retreat books write.  Certainly a lot more than the one book I’d hoped for.