Sometimes My Eyeballs Cry Blood

I'm going to find talking about needing luck to get published hard, because I don't believe in luck. Well - I do believe in luck. It does happen that sometimes you're in just the right place at just the right time.

But more often than not, you were in that right place at the right time because you did your due diligence. You:

1. Researched the market.

2. Honed your craft to a point so fine and sharp you could cut a tin can in two with it.

3. Honed it some more until the honing starts to make you cry.

4. Honed it some more after that, so that the honing becomes one bleak, unending tunnel of madness, and all your life and all your hopes and dreams are compressed down into a square of light and an oblong of letters.

5. Researched the publishers, the agents, the industry, to the point where you can confidently give advice at places like Romance Divas, sure and certain in the knowledge that you're right.

6. Discovered the correct formatting for your manuscript in every tiny aspect, from font size to dialogue punctuation to page numbering.

7. Joined Twitter. For the love of God, join Twitter. Yes, it's lucky if an editor approaches you on Twitter and asks you to submit. But none of that can actually happen unless you've joined Twitter and conversed with like-minded people in the first place.

And that's it. That's my advice. Don't rely on luck to get you there. Make your own luck, as much as it is humanly possible to do so.


P.S. My book, Sheltered, released on Friday! Hurrah! Here's the blurb for it:

Evie has lived her entire life under her abusive father’s thumb. He controls everything. Where she goes to college, who she sees, what she does. But when she meets Van—a punk who shows her how different life could be—she realizes how much she’s been missing.

Van offers her excitement, protection, love…and most of all, sex—even if he’s at first reluctant to give her all the things she’s been craving. She wants to explore this new world of arousal and desire, but Van is only too aware of how fragile she is, how innocent…

And how much is at stake, when their love is forbidden


And the buy links, if it strikes your fancy:

http://www.jasminejade.com/p-9969-sheltered.aspx#

http://www.amazon.com/Sheltered-ebook/dp/B007ITF0LA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1331690199&sr=1-2