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As I mentioned a day or two ago, I sold my first book to an e-publisher at the end of 1999. WHERE’S MICHELLE is a 75K word romantic mystery/suspense set in England, and my dreams of publication were finally realized when it was first published in the year 2000. Unfortunately, it was only available as a download or on a CD. Despite numerous promises by the company, it never made it into print. Later that same year, I sold them a second book, WITHOUT A CLUE, another 75K romantic mystery/suspense, this time set in Paris, France.

But, like so many other e-pubs around that time, it soon became clear the one I was with was in serious trouble. I stayed on for a while, but as one promise after another was broken without any explanation, royalties were not paid and neither, apparently, was the staff, the writing was definitely on the wall. About the middle of 2002, when I heard the staff had quit, I knew it was time for me to pick up my toys and go elsewhere.

I knew better than to waste my time on NY. Anyway I didn’t have an agent, and I wasn’t interested in going through all the months of waiting just to receive yet another rejection. Instead, I checked the internet for possibilities and also various other e-pubs who I knew were looking for books.

Before I actually quit the other publisher, and before I’d made up my mind as to which new one I should go with, by now I had a couple of invitations from other e-pubs, a former staff member from my previous publisher contacted me. She said some of the other former staff members were starting a new company. They’d learned what not to do at the last place, and for this reason they did not intend to open up to the general public and find themselves deluged with thousands of manuscripts. Submissions would be strictly by-invitation-only, and was I interested?

You bet I was interested, and in some ways that’s where my story ends because here we are, almost six years later, and I’m still with them now. Like many new ventures, Amber Quill started as it meant to go on, inviting only those writers they wanted to publish, and never biting off more than it could comfortably chew. But unlike most operations that start off with the best of intentions and then lose them somewhere along the way, AQP never has. Submissions are still only by invitation of the owners, or by entering and winning a spot in the annual Heat Wave contest. And Amber Quill still continues to care about its writers. Questions and queries are always answered in a timely fashion, our books are released according to schedule, and there’s never a problem with royalties.

In the first part of 2003, Amber Quill re-released WHERE’S MICHELLE, we made a few additions to distinguish it from the original, and a couple of months later, they also published WITHOUT A CLUE. Even better, both books were available almost simultaneously in download and in print, and are still available at www.amberquill.com

Early in 2004, a short romance I’d sold to Mundania Press was published in their FLIGHTS OF MIND anthology. And soon after that I was invited by a then fellow member of RWA’s Kiss of Death Chapter and Lethal Ladies to take part in an anthology she and some friends were trying to organize. Six of us were to each write a paranormal romance novella set around Christmas, New Year, or Valentine’s Day. Once we’d finished the writing, we critiqued and edited each other’s stories, and were all set to go. But then disaster struck. The publisher we had lined up quit business. What happened after that is a long and tortuous story you don’t want to hear about. However, the anthology did find eventually find a home--after going nowhere with a couple of other e-pubs, ENCHANTED HOLIDAYS was re-released by Cerridwen a year or two ago.

We also wrote a second anthology, five spooky stories that were also published by Cerridwen as ONE TOUCH BEYOND. We don’t have any plans for more anthologies at this time, but we have our own chat loop, The Yarnspinners, and we keep in touch, updating each other on what’s happening in our lives and it’s really nice. A few weeks may pass without any of us posting, but if something happens to one of us, we all know the support is there, ready and waiting, with a friendly ear, or a prayer, or whatever it takes. We live all over--New Hampshire, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Australia, and me up here in Canada. I’ve never met even one of these women in person, but I don’t need to meet them face to face to know that they are and always will be some of my dearest and most supportive friends. Now and again, we all have problems of one kind or another, and like all good friends we can tell each other just about anything, knowing we’ll get the support, understanding or whatever it is that we need.

In 2004, Amber Quill published my third full-length romantic mystery/suspense, SEEING IS BELIEVING. It’s actually a murder mystery, set in England, and the heroine is arrested for murdering her business partner. I have a friend, a cop with 30 years’ CID experience with the Thames Valley Constabulary, who helped me with the all the technicalities of arrest and imprisonment, British style. I loved writing that book. Everyone who read it said it was my best so far. The main characters, Liz and Paul, had me so hooked, I intended the book to be the first in a series--SEEING CAN BE DECEIVING is already partly written, and the plot for SEEING CAN BE DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS is already sketched out.

But like everything else, reader tastes change. The books weren’t selling, and I found myself wondering whether to continue writing what I loved most--mystery and suspense, or go with what readers were demanding. As far as the e-book industry was concerned, readers were buying very little sweet anything, and what I’d made to that point on my three novels and the three anthology novellas wouldn’t have kept a small mouse in cheese for more than a week or two at most.

My dream was to make enough so that I could retire and write full time, and so far I wasn’t doing very well.

Then one of the members of my old critique group sold to Red Sage, and she brought along her next submission for us to take a look at. Privately, I thought it was a little way out and a lot wild. Also privately, I thought, hey I can do that. I’d written enough stories that stopped at the bedroom door, what could be so difficult about following the characters inside?

But I’ll think I’ll save what happened next for tomorrow.

Chris/Christiane