Almost four years to the day when I started writing my first novel, I’ve signed with a literary agent!

The novel I submitted, THE LIFE MAKEOVER CLUB, came about during my own life makeover, and had many makeovers of its own (revisions, revisions, revisions) and I’m so glad it’s finally ready to be ‘out there’ and has caught the attention of Joelle Delbourgo from Joelle Delbourgo Associates, Inc in New Jersey, USA.

This milestone has made me realise how far I’ve come in the last four years. So often we keep thinking about the future, wanting to get somewhere, achieve new things, that we can forget what we have achieved already. When was the last time you took a step back and celebrated your progress in life?

Since I made the commitment to being a writer in October 2009, I’ve written five novels (3 with publishing contracts), two novellas (both published), several short stories, and a few partials (3 chapters and synopsis of a potential story), as well as MANY title and plot ideas! I have a title fetish. I collect them and think of new ones all the time, jotting them down on my title list. For me, a simple, catchy title can inspire a whole story idea.

When I came up with the title for The Life Makeover Club, I knew it was something I had to write. I’d been trying to think up an idea for my first story. All I knew was that I wanted to write a novel. I’d participated in a couple of self improvement and business coaching programs, and thought it would be fun to write about people who wanted to change their lives in some way, and who took major action to make their dreams a reality. And so this book was born.

After about seventy queries to agents over three months, I am now one step closer to my dream of having this book published. I had several requests for the full manuscript, a few for the partial, and two offers of representation. Of course, I could only accept one, and let me tell you – it was a very hard decision to make! Especially as during that week I was dealing with the sadness of our old home burning down in the Blue Mountains bushfires. My son grew up there, and the house was mostly designed by my mum, and so much work had been done on it. But it’s the memories we had there that made it so sad. It was heartbreaking to see it burning on the TV news, and then to see the mess of the rubble in photographs afterwards. They say big things often happen all at once, and over those few days they certainly did! Anyway, I was thrilled with both agent offers, and ultimately decided to put myself in the capable hands of Joelle.

Next step: make some improvements to the manuscript to prepare it for submission, then wait and hope a publisher (or two, or three…) wants it! 😉

I’m ready, I’m excited, and I hope to be sharing this story with you soon! 🙂

~ Juliet