It made me curious. Something had happened, something bad, but I didn't know who she was or where she was. I ignored her. Like I said, I hadn't written for a while and I had a lot of other things going on at the time.
She didn't go away. Instead, I kept seeing that scene vignette over and over and over. Finally, I had to write it. I had to know what was going on. The curiosity was killing me.
I discovered her name was Ravyn Verdier and that she was a communications specialist. I learned that all her teammates had been murdered and that she was in shock, waiting for the killer to come for her and finish his/her work. I write romance, not horror and now I was curious who the hero was and how this was going to be romantic in any way. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else around, so that added to my interest. I wrote some more.
The hero showed up in the next scene. Captain Damon Brody, Army Special Forces. There for a training mission with his team. They respond to the emergency beacon coming from the building where my heroine is waiting to die.
I wrote a good 25% of the first draft without knowing the book was set in the future on another planet. It could have been in any temperate wilderness area, but I didn't stop to think about it. I just got the words down, afraid they'd leave and I'd be stuck without all the answers I needed about who the killer was and why he'd killed.
As I told the story, I was under the impression that Ravyn was the only one with issues to be resolved before there could be a happy ending. I was probably around 50% through my first draft when Damon dropped his issue on me. It was a doozy.
I continued on, though, I just made notes and plowed forward. Everything that needed to be fixed would be when I did revisions.
When the draft was finished, I filled in all the things I'd learned along the way and fixed/strengthened other things. For the first time ever, I sent it out to people to read. Prior to this, I just submitted to editors and let them reject me. That felt safer. I got feedback and revised again.
As I worked on another round of (much) smaller revisions, I started entering Ravyn's Flight in contests for unpublished authors. I finaled in many, won some. One of the contests I won had a grand prize of a read of the full manuscript by an editor.
I'd finished finished right before the winners were notified. I sent my manuscript off to an editor at a publisher which was notorious for slow wait times. And a few days later, I left for vacation. This was a partial family reunion since lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins were also taking the same cruise. My parents and I were excited.
We got back in the late afternoon. This was January 2002 and we only had dial-up internet. It took forever for the email that had come in while I was on vacation to download. It was well after 5pm in New York when I saw the email from the editor I'd sent my manuscript to asking me to contact her. It had been about 2 weeks since I'd sent it. There was no way they could have read it so quickly. Right?
I was instant messaging that night with a writer friend who insisted I'd sold the book. She was correct, and in November 2002 my first book was released. I took pictures of it on the bookshelves at real bookstores. (ebooks weren't popular then and the book was only released in paper at the time.)
It was exciting and scary and surreal. My biggest dream ever had been attained. Time to work toward the next goal.
