One of my favorite questions to ask authors is how they got to where they are (i.e. how they became published), and Joanna Ruth Meyer, author of the upcoming YA fantasy Beyond the Shadowed Earth, was kind enough to answer it today!

 

My Quest to Authordom!

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

Once upon a time during the summer of 2005, I finished my very first novel. I’d been working on it off and on for several years, but the discovery of National Novel Writing Month—aka NaNoWriMo—inspired me to finally forge on to The End. I wrote my second novel for NaNoWriMo proper in November of 2005. This is when I began seriously writing towards the goal of publication. I started reading up on the industry, tried my hand at a query letter, and kept writing and writing and writing. I penned three more novels, including the then titled The Whale and the Tree for NaNo 2006. I even revised a couple of them.

In late 2008, I sent off my first queries for The Whale and the Tree. At the time, it was 118,000 words (I know, I know!), and shockingly, I got a couple of requests! They didn’t end up amounting to anything, but it was still encouraging to get some bites. I kept writing, and by 2010 I had a new book to query. This one didn’t get as much traction, although my one claim to fame is getting a full request from the assistant of Suzanne Collins’s agent! 😀 I queried two different versions of this book, to no avail.

In 2013 I started a complete rewrite of The Whale and the Tree, and in 2014, with the encouragement of my stalwart critique partner, I finished the rewrite. I started querying this new version that August.

I got a lot of requests—way more than ever before. But with the requests came lots of rejections. Both piled up. I determined to query for a year or until I hit 100 rejections, whichever came first… So I kept sending out more queries while outlining and then writing the first draft of Echo North for NaNo 2014. In December, I got a very promising full request. In March 2015, that full request led to a phone call and my very first offer of representation, which in turn led to THREE MORE OFFERS, including one from the wizardly Sarah Davies, who I signed with in April 2015.

That summer, under Sarah’s guidance, I ripped The Whale and the Tree apart at the seams and stitched it back together, this time with a 100% more coherent plot (aka Sarah made me find a plot, how cruel XD) and 50% less characters staring out of windows/into the fire/into the sea whilst crying. We went on submission with the newly retitled The Haunting Sea at the very end of September 2015. By November, we had a few revise and resubmits from several different editors, one of which I really connected with. I revised Sea AGAIN, and resubmitted it to that editor in January.

Cue lots of waiting and existential despair, leading to an eventual no from that R&R in April 2016. We’d gone through our whole submission list by that point, and Sarah had the “maybe we should put this in a drawer” chat with me. I handled it very well, by eating tons of ice cream, and playing a perfectly healthy amount of Candy Crush whilst sobbing on the floor.

In June 2016, an acquiring editor from Page Street Publishing reached out to Sarah, asking if The Haunting Sea was still available—she’d read the manuscript while working for another house and had really liked it. After revising the first few chapters with this editor, Page Street made an official offer on The Haunting Sea on September 1st, 2016, almost a full year after we’d gone on submission.

On January 9th, 2018, the one-more-word-added-to-the-title Beneath the Haunting Sea was published!!

So for those keeping track, it took a little over eleven years for Sea to go from rough NaNoWriMo draft to published book! It was a long and exhausting and winding road, but I couldn’t be happier with where it ended up.

Beyond the Shadowed Earth will be my third published novel—a companion book to Sea. I’m so excited for Earth to be out in the world, joining its younger siblings and going on adventures of its own. 🙂

For all those writers out there still in the querying or submission trenches, keep going! I believe in you.

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About the Book

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It has always been Eda’s dream to become empress, no matter the cost. Haunted by her ambition and selfishness, she’s convinced that the only way to achieve her goal is to barter with the gods. But all requests come with a price and Eda bargains away the soul of her best friend in exchange for the crown.

Years later, her hold on the empire begins to crumble and her best friend unexpectedly grows sick and dies. Gnawed by guilt and betrayal, Eda embarks on a harrowing journey to confront the very god who gave her the kingdom in the first place. However, she soon discovers that he’s trapped at the center of an otherworldly labyrinth and that her bargain with him is more complex than she ever could have imagined.

Set in the same universe as Joanna’s debut, Beneath the Haunting Sea, Beyond the Shadowed Earth combines her incredible world building and lush prose with a new, villainous lead.

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