A Long Time Coming by Jannine Gallant

I want to share my news here, where I feel the love and support of my fellow authors who are on the same journey. So, something good happened, something I've waited for and dreamed about since I put pen to paper (literally) the summer I graduated from high school and decided I wanted to write romance books when I grew up. Thirty-six years later, I finally got the call I had stopped believing would ever come. Apparently, I'm a slow maturer! Now mind you, I've been published for six years. I was thrilled when that first digital contract was offered, and the first box of print on demand books was delivered to my door. Nothing is quite as wonderful for an author as the emotional connection to holding a book with your name on the cover. But I never lost the desire to see my books on a shelf in an actual bookstore.

I think we've all been there.

I've felt the frustration, convinced it was all about luck. Thinking that no matter how hard I worked or how good my books were, having my babies brush shoulders with Nora's on a shelf in an actual store wasn't ever going to happen. Turns out, it isn't a total crap-shoot, after all. Apparently we can make our own luck. I hope my story will inspire every author out there who is tempted to give up on their dream.

I've written and published or contracted a total of 18 books over the last six years. I've gone from small publisher to self publishing to a search for an agent to the digital imprint of a large publisher. I think I can say with confidence that my writing has continued to improve. I've worked hard and put out two or more titles per year. I kept producing, even when sales were awful and I felt like a complete failure. Still, I had confidence in my work and kept at it. And little by little the sales improved, and my publisher took notice and began promoting my books. Their efforts grew my audience. As my latest series, Born To Be Wilde, gets ready to launch into cyberspace at the end of this month, my editor told me my pub wanted to consider something new from me. I came up with the premise and blurbs for a three book romantic suspense series, per their request, then wrote a synopsis and the first three chapters of the first book. Then I waited...and waited...and waited.

The phone call finally came. But it wasn't from Marci, my editor at Lyrical, the digital imprint of Kensington. It was from Martin, who is much higher up the food chain. And he made the offer I'd hoped for but never really believed I'd get. He told me my books had attracted notice, that my readership was growing, and that the team at Kensington felt I was ready for print. Would I be interested in a 3 book contract with their new Lyrical mass market paperback line, which would launch in 2018?

Uh, hell yeah I'd be interested! So, in March and July and December of 2018, I'll have books with my name on them on shelves in actual brick and mortar stores. Okay, maybe I won't rub shoulders with Nora since she's an R and I'm a G, but I think I can live with that!

The moral of this admittedly long post is...Don't give up! Keep writing and improving your craft. Keep putting out those books until you grow a following. It took me 36 years and 18 books, but it happened. Perseverance won! Now all I have to do is write these next three books to the best of my ability and promote the ones I have coming out, and hope all the planets line up in the galaxy in 2018 and those babies sell!

If I can do it, you can do it, too!

So, while we're waiting for 2018 to roll around or even for Wilde One to launch at the end of the month, marketing is pushing my old series. Every Move She Makes is on sale for 99 cents for the entire month of September, and Every Step She Takes is selling for 99 cents for two more days. Get them while they're hot at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Apple iBooks! Visit my website for info on all my books, and happy reading!