In a postscript, she said that if I would cut the manuscript in half and fix all its shortcomings, I could resubmit it. She finished by complaining that the manuscript was single-spaced instead of double-spaced. The editor said that if I had properly researched the genre, I would have known all that. “I have complete faith in you and your book.”Ī few weeks later, my manuscript was returned with a withering rejection letter stating that my manuscript was too long, too sensual, and too emotionally intense for a Regency romance. When I warned him that could be aiming a little too high, he laughed and put his arm around me. “To your first bestseller,” he said with complete confidence. That night, my husband opened a bottle of champagne, and we happily toasted Whitney’s future. Finally, I decided my wonderful new book was ready to send to a lucky publisher who would surely be dazzled by my unique, enhanced, and vastly improved version of a Regency romance. I found that out the hard way.įilled with zeal and confidence, I named the heroine Whitney after my daughter and the hero Clayton after my son, and then I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I also didn’t know that most publishers preferred to buy women’s fiction manuscripts that they could slide easily into a genre the way they already published it. Since my background was solely in finance and human resources, I knew nothing about the rules governing manuscript formats I didn’t even know there were rules. I decided to write the type of book I wanted to read but couldn’t find. Those novels were cute, but I wanted to read about Regency characters who possessed the emotion, sensuality, humor, and sophistication of real human beings, and I wanted a complex plot filled with unexpected twists and unpredictable outcomes. I’ve always loved books about England’s glittering Regency period, but by 1976 I’d already read everything I could find, and the only new books being published were in Regency romance “series.” These Regency novels were all very short and sweet, with simple plots and undeveloped characters who occasionally exchanged a chaste kiss to demonstrate their passion. I think you might enjoy the “story behind the story” of Whitney, My Love, so here it is. Naturally, I’m delighted, but in the case of Whitney My Love, I also feel a special sense of pride and sentimentality, because Whitney was my first book, and its path to publication was so long and so bumpy, that I often doubted that it-or I-would ever be published. As I write this letter to you, all my past books are being readied for release in digital format.
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