When there’s yin, there’s yang. When there’s black, there’s white. When there’s low Clubhouse numbers, there’s…a book deal!

Back in the fall, Jessica Swift was approached by Tonia, an Acquisitions Manager at North Light Craft Books (they published Kelly Rae Roberts!), asking if she’d be interested in writing a book for them. She responded, “Why yes, yes I would. Also, I have already kinda wrote one with my friend Michelle. Here it is, in case it interests you.” (Ain’t she sweet?!)

To back it up, a few months prior, we got an email sent to us straight from our Contact page, asking if we’d wanna make The Declaration of You into “a book-book”. After a round of “Duh please!”, that publisher (different from this one) pitched us to her boss. We’re not sure exactly what he said, but it prompted her to give us this feedback:

“My publisher felt you might want to consider approaching young adult houses. I’m not sure if that fits with your goals, but for what it’s worth, that’s an idea.”

We were disappointed about the outcome, but it was obvious that the publisher didn’t “get” us (The Declaration of You SO isn’t meant for kids!), so off we went on our merry way of e-courses and workshops and other Declaration of You goodness, with a book-book idea planted in our brains but not quite ready for prime-time yet.

Obviously, we were thrilled yet cautious with the newfound interest in The Declaration of You as a book-book. We got on the phone with Tonia in mid-October and delivered a 60-ish page proposal around Thanksgiving. Thankfully she had our back and wanted to make sure we set her up to give a killer pitch, and she asked us to trim down the proposal to half the size so she could cut right to the chase with her team. We sent it to her Christmas Eve Day, and she told us she was going to present it “in January.” Of course Jess and I had it in the back of our minds that we’d follow-up with Tonia in February if we didn’t hear anything, and as the month went by we continued to go on our merry way.

You can imagine our excitement when Tonia sent us an email last Friday at 9:25a saying, “Send collective good thoughts – I’m presenting in 5 minutes and will keep you posted!” There was much squealing and good-thinking and finger-crossing, and 30 short minutes later we got a teaser from Tonia saying, “I am so flippin’ excited right now. We get to do this project together and share the Declaration of You with all the souls of the world who can benefit by it!” After responding, quite eloquently, “AreyousayingwhatIthinkyou’resaying?!?!?!?!” she said, “Yes! North Light wants to add you to our list of authors!” Then I called Jess and my husband and my mother and hyperventilated and paced and tried not to throw up because nobody was picking up the phone. But then they did and I didn’t do any work for the rest of the day.

The Declaration of You will be in real-live shelves in July 2013, and on virtual shelves a few weeks prior. I’m so excited to take this journey with Jess (she’s seriously the bestest on so many levels, you guys – this is what a business partnership should always be/feel like!) and have Tonia and the North Light Craft Books team be on our, um, team. I know we’re in such good hands and, despite the craziness/pressure/deadlines that come with book-writing, I know that it’s going to be a super big blast!

My life is so just so surreal sometimes.

—————————————————–

Tags: Happy Hooplah, Michelle's Memoirs

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 1:13 am and is filed under Encouragement for Everyone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.