Going Pole to Pole

As my previous post outlined, I'm about to be published. Which is amazing. What is even more amazing is how this came to be, and who I'm publishing with.

About 10 years ago I used to read and write a lot of fanfic. My genre was Highlander. I still have a thing for the show (as well as a number of other old Canadan shows like La Femme Nikita and Due South). I wrote enough fanfic that I caught the writing bug, and about five years ago I was showing my stuff to a friend. She told me, "You're wasted in fanfic, you need to think about going pro."

I was really flattered, but I did not have any experience with "real" gay fiction at the time. I did not even know huge amounts of gay fiction are written by women. It turns out, m/m romance is a region of fiction where loads of women love to write ... and read. So a lightbulb went off over my head, and I realized, this was where I probably belonged.

Getting on the Web and looking for books was interesting. "Spoiled for choice" was putting it mildly. I had no idea where to start. So I asked my friend to make some recommends -- she told me great places to start, gave me a half dozen names to go read.

One of them turned out to be my favorite writer. If you don't know the name of Mel Keegan, you just don't know gay books. Mel Keegan writes "real" books, with real plots, stories with meat on their bones, as well as the sexy stuff. He also writes so well, the author inside me cringed to compare my humble works, and got a bit depressed, and a bit jealous, and then a LOT challenged. Reading Mel Keegan made Claudia Dante a better writer, and Claudia is the first one to admit it.

I found my way to www.melkeegan.com without any problem (duh), and from there went to his blog. Surprise! I never knew Mel had lived and worked in Alaska! He was up in Fairbanks, which is something like 358 miles away from my very own front door (if you stay on the Parks Highway. Take the Richardson, and it adds about an hour, give or take, depending how lead-footed you are).

This made me feel like I almost knew Mel, So I left a comment on the blog, and told him how much I liked his books, and how I was in Alaska. I was surprised and so pleased when he replied. We started chatting. After maybe a couple dozen emails I risked mentioning I'm a writer and wanted to get published. I was really hesitating about saying that. Pro writers must get hit up every day by wannabes, always saying, "Can you help me get my book published?" That would get real old, real fast. I didn't want to wear out my welcome.

He was totally charming, and helpful. It basically came down to, "You're talking to the wrong person, Claudia -- I'm a writer, you need to be talking to an editor or publisher." And then he said, "Why don't you show your best stuff to Jade at DreamCraft, see what she says?"

I emailed off to DreamCraft with a lot more hesitation. I knew from their website, they are not in the US. They are in Australia, which is a hemisphere away. I thought, "How can this ever work?"

Of course, I didn't reckon with the magic of the Web. Long story short, I wound up signing with DreamCraft about six months ago. I've been working with a fantastic editor since then to bring some stories up to speed. They're going to be published very soon and I'm thrilled.

In my next post, I'll write about how it went from submitting to getting close to publishing. You've read enough from me already, for now...