The Long, Winding Road to Publication

In 1999, I got the phone call every writer dreams of when my agent rang to tell me that William Morrow had made an offer on my first novel, . The advance was very modest, but I didn’t care. I had been trying to get published for almost 10 years and hadn’t even managed to place a short story yet. Like many writers, I’d had my share of close calls, the most significant one being when I’d had an internship at the and the fiction editor there, , read the first few chapters of and liked it enough to offer to help me find a publisher. The fact that someone of his stature couldn’t find someone to publish the book was one of many indicators of how challenging the publishing world can be. But eventually, I met the right