Success Story From a Long-Time Blog Member!

Here's a fabulous story from someone who's been around for a long time (you all know her as macaronipants, one of my all-time favorite screen names!).  In her own words:


Dear Authoress:

I’ve followed your blog for a long time and have enjoyed the inspiration and generosity found here (as well as the great mystery of trying to guess who the heck you are!), so when information was posted about the 2011 Baker’s Dozen auction, I decided that was a good deadline to set for myself to get through one last revision (on a book I’d been tinkering with for years). Many sleepless, writing-filled nights later, I entered (#38 Middle Grade – The Secret Hum of a Daisy). The morning of the auction, I drove my daughter to school, came home and poured myself a cup of coffee, anticipating a leisurely, yet excited wait. When I clicked on my entry, I saw it was all over while I sat in the car line!

While the winning agent of the full rejected the ms, I soon had three more requests from participating agents, and the response gave me the confidence to query two more. By December 19th, I had five full manuscripts out and settled in for the Long Wait (during which time, many cookies were baked and consumed – it was the holidays after all).

Thank goodness for my waistline, the wait didn’t end up being too long. I heard back from my agent in early January asking if I’d be willing to revise and resubmit. So I dug into that revision with everything I had, and a month later, with shaking hands, resubmitted. Three days later, I got that wonderful email asking for a phone conversation later that day. So on my oldest daughter’s birthday--after babbling somewhat incoherently about chicken cacciatore and head injuries--I signed with the wonderful Rosemary Stimola of Stimola Literary Studio and couldn’t be happier. She is the perfect agent for me. Rosemary then submitted immediately, and HUM was sold in a two-book deal. Here’s the PM announcement:

“Tracy Holczer's THE SECRET HUM OF A DAISY, in which the sudden death of her mother brings a 12-year old to live with her estranged grandmother where, after uncovering a family secret, she begins to see the world through her own eyes, rather than those of the mom she loved and lost, and finds healing in the most unlikely places, to Stacey Barney at Putnam Children's, in a two-book deal, by Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio.”

So thank you, Authoress, for providing an informative place to hang where we can learn how to critique and be critiqued, try out our confidence, and celebrate the glory of cashews.

Tracy Holczer

Interview on querytracker is here.

Brand spanking new website is here.