Why You *Really* Should Finish that Book

I’m taking a page from Mike Befeler, and introducing myself, since this is also my first post on the RMFW blog! I’m Jeffe Kennedy and fairly new to RMFW, though I did attend the Colorado Gold conference a number of years ago.

It’s kind of a funny (read: cringeworthy) story. I attended at the urging of my good friend, RoseMarie London. I lived in Laramie, Wyoming at the time – I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico now – so it was a fairly close trip for us. I’d been writing nonfiction for some time at that point. This was maybe 2006? My essay collection, Wyoming Trucks, True Love and the Weather Channel, had come out from University of New Mexico Press in 2004. My next project, a novel-length narrative nonfiction story, had received the thumbs down from everyone I mentioned it to. At a loss, and flailing more than just a bit, I’d started writing fiction.

I was having great fun writing this new piece, a story about a neuroscientist who accidentally winds up in Faerie. RoseMarie said that, since I was getting into writing genre, I should go with her to the conference. Besides, our buddy Chuck Box would be there and it we could party. Sure! Why not? With enthusiasm, I paid my fees and signed up to pitch to an editor.

There was one problem: I didn’t have a completed manuscript.

What was I thinking?? I don’t know, really. Maybe some of it was coming from the Land of Nonfiction. After all, I hadn’t had a completed book when my UNM Press editor read one of my essays and invited me to put a collection together for her. The book ended up being about half previously published essays and half new – quite a few that I wrote, completed or polished for the collection. I used to joke that people wanting to get a book published shouldn’t try my method at home, but somehow it had never quite penetrated my thick skull just how unusual – and amazingly lucky – that path had been.

So, there I was, nervously waiting for my assigned pitch appointment with Shauna Summers. (That might tell some of you record-keepers what year this was.) In a surprise move, apparently Shauna decided to take everyone scheduled throughout the hour in a group pitch. We all went in and sat around the table. One by one I listened to my fellow sacrificial lambs, either with stammering nerves or brash confidence, spin out their pitches. After each one, she’d nod and ask, “Is it finished?” The answer was almost always no.

What were we thinking??

I think one girl had completed her manuscript and when Shauna smiled and said “send it,” it was like the rays of heaven shone down on her. I was desperately envious, I don’t mind admitting, because when it came my turn and I had to confess that it wasn’t finished (hell – I had maybe three chapters), she told me what she told the others. She gave us her card and told us to send it when it was done. She figured our conference fee should include the opportunity to send her our work.

An opportunity I totally blew.

It took me another year or two to actually write that book. When I began shopping it, I discovered I’d lost Shauna’s card. And then it turned out she’d changed houses anyway.

That book eventually became Rogue’s Pawn, published by Carina Press as a Fantasy Romance just last summer. The sequel, Rogue’s Possession, comes out in October, with the trilogy cap coming out next year. I’ve also now published three Erotic Romances with Carina, in my Facets of Passion series, with a fourth coming out at Christmas. I’ve just signed a three-book deal with them for three more novel-length erotic romances. I’ve also signed a deal with Kensington this year, for my e-serial Master of the Opera, which debuts in January, and for a Fantasy trilogy, The Twelve Kingdoms, coming out in trade paperback starting next June. (Incidentally, a prequel short story to that trilogy is included in the anthology Thunder on the Battlefield, Volume II, which just came out August 7, the day I’m writing this post!)

So, things have been very good for me. I’ve been lucky. I also figured out how to finish books, which always helps.

Still, just a few weeks ago, I was signing books at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Literacy Signing in Atlanta and who but Shauna Summers came by! Only she was visiting the author sitting next to me, who Shauna edits and whose books just happen to be on all the bestseller lists. They laughed and chatted and I nearly said, “Hi, remember me? I’m the dufus who pitched to you years ago with no actual book to submit.” Of course, I didn’t, because she wouldn’t. I was forgettable. I wanted to clench my tiny fists and wail to the sky (or fluorescent-lit convention hall ceiling) that she should have been MINE MINE MINE!

Alas.

At any rate, that’s me and my cautionary tale. Now go finish your books!

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Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her fantasy BDSM romance, Petals and Thorns, originally published under the pen name Jennifer Paris, has won several reader awards. Sapphire, the first book in Facets of Passion has placed first in multiple romance contests and the follow-up, Platinum, is climbing the charts. Her most recent works include three fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns, the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and the post-apocalyptic vampire erotica of the Blood Currency.

Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, plentiful free-range lizards and a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com or every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog.

She is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Foreword Literary.