It's official - I'm getting Published!!!!

Today Pandamoon Publishing made the official announcement!
I am officially their newest author and opening a new Genre in the Pandamoon Family!

I'm so excited!!!!

So here's all the information that lead to this fantastic point in my life!

In March, Twitter held a #pitmad party - standing for pitch madness. In this party you post a pitch for your manuscript in 140 characters. I admit I had never limited my pitch down to two sentences before, but after watching people post for over half an hour I thought "You know, if I don't at least put something out there, I will regret not having participated in some small degree" so I did.

I admit that I thought my pathetic little pitch did not portray my book well at all - but within 2 minutes I had a request to see my query and 5 pages. That's when I panicked. I had participated because I didn't think anything would actually happen and I just wanted to say "I was part of that event"
Not only that, but I actually had a few other bites too.

I jumped on facebook and begged - yes literally begged - several people to look over my MS and make it look good. Then I sent it off to all those who had requested it.

Several weeks later, to my complete astonishment, I was asked for a full manuscript!

I panicked again, sent it out to all my beta readers, pulled long hours with little sleep to edit it to perfection, and sent it out. Then I waited and crossed my fingers and hoped

When I received the Email from Zara Kramer at Pandamoon I actually glanced at the first line, that showed up on my phone, and instantly dismissed it, not taking in the words, and thinking it was from someone that I needed to reply to later.

About 10 minutes later my brain kicked into action and I realized that what I had read was not something to ignore, and was not just a regular email that could be pushed off. It read "Congratulations on a great novel! The acquisition team voted to move forward with your book. I'd like to set up a conference call ..."

I started shaking! Then I read it again and opened the email fully to finish reading it. Then I kind of freaked out. I ran in and woke up my husband by saying "Babe, I need you to wake up right now!"
He, of course, thought something was wrong and was saying stuff like, "What happened? What's wrong?"
I made him sit up and I put my phone, with the email on it, in front of his face and told him to read it out loud because I wasn't sure it said what I thought it said.

It did! :)

He read the first part (as posted above) and stopped, grinned and tackled me in a huge hug! "You did it! It's going to be published!" he yelled. Meanwhile, it had finally hit me and I started crying! Yup, lots of tears and laughter and more tears!

Needless to say that for the next several hours I was up in the air, calling a few people, replying to the email, crying some more, and calling a few more people (mostly family and only 1 very good friend). Also following up with the other places that had my manuscript as well.

So, after a wonderful conference call with Zara Kramer, I considered everything and decided that they really would be a great company to work with. So I went for it and got to work: looking over a contract and discussing thing with my lawyer. Already Pandamoon has been fantastic to work with - answering all my questions and negotiating the contract to everyone's satisfaction. I couldn't be more pleased. Several weeks later, I officially signed the contract!

I'm so excited for this new stage of my journey to begin.

What am I doing now? I'm editing, of course! And I'm working on a new novel as well - I talk about it in an interview posted by Jackson Baer, aslso a Pandamoon Author. (Read the interview here)

Thanks to everyone who helped me get my manuscript to this stage! Thanks for everyone who will continue to help me as I continue on this journey.

Being an author is a continual process - as I'm discovering. I'm always learning and progressing. So as always, I am An Author in Progress and I'm excited to share my experiences with you all!

Rebecca Lamoreaux