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LOVE ON THE RUN released in May of 2002. I hadn’t given up dreams of a New York contract, so partials of my long, long SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS were still languishing at several publishers. It took Berkley two years to reject the requested partial and the Pocket editor three years. By this time, SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS was already published by Wings ePress in August 2003. I followed with another romantic suspense, THE MAN FOR THE JOB, in September (I think) 2004.

And then I started TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, aiming again for Silhouette Intimate Moments. My day job was very busy and it took a little longer to complete. I’m too embarrassed to say just how long. But it was another rejection from Silhouette. This time, I was given several sound reasons for the rejection and I took those comments to heart and revised the manuscript.

I also noticed Ellora’s Cave was gaining prominence in the erotic romance market. The sheriff heroine of TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE was a pretty sexy kind of gal and I amped up the love scenes and submitted to them. In addition, I also submitted it to a local press, Premium Press America, who after being in business for ten to twenty years, decided to go into the romance business.

Since I’d already received the rights back on LOVE ON THE RUN, I submitted that to PPA as well. Ellora’s Cave rejected TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, but with a request to revise and resubmit, which I also did. It quickly became apparent that PPA had missed the boat. My rejection/resubmit letter from PPA had gone astray (thank goodness, given what later happened to their contracted authors) and LOVE ON THE RUN was rejected with suggestions to add another love scene or two.

You might say I was getting discouraged. During this round of revisions and resubmissions, my day job as a nurse case manager had turned into a nightmare. I was working away on a romantic suspense set in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Watching the resulting devastation killed my desire to complete the story, but I eventually resumed writing it several months later. I wrote when I could summon the energy, but working ten hours a day, five days a week as a telecommuter and calling in insurance reviews on hospital patients was beginning to gut all my creativity.

Then one of my writer pals, Jody Wallace, suggested I try a new publisher who was getting a nice buzz, Samhain Publishing. At this point I didn’t have anything to lose, so I sent it off and forgot about it. My day job got worse. The director made me come back into the office. My elderly Chow Chow pined away and died. The entire crew was being worked to death. We were on salary and working about sixty hours a week by then.

Finally I’d had enough. I resigned.

I was begged to stay, then offered the only thing which could induce me to stay: if you can work from home again, will you stay? I stayed another six weeks and resigned again. This time it stuck. I also took the last week of my vacation as part of my two week notice.

So there!

The last day I worked, September 21, 2006, I had to go in and turn in my keys and I.D. badge. But when I came home, I found a contract offer for TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, from editor Linda Ingmanson at Samhain Publishing and it even included a small advance.

Talk about an omen! I promptly took off on my vacation to upstate New York and left Tennessee, the office politics and angst in the dust.