Between 2008 and 2012, two separate publishers invited me to submit non-fiction book proposals about gardening, the topic of my blog, RedWhiteandGrew.com .   Neither proposal resulted in a signed contract. For the second proposal, the concept was rejected at the last minute for fear it would be overshadowed by Michelle Obama’s book on The White House garden, then due from the publishing house’s competitor. Let me tell you, nothing takes the sting out of rejection quite like being told that the First Lady of the United States is your competition. Over time and as is commonplace with long-time bloggers, my blog topics spread out from my original focus (victory gardening history) to include personal areas interest: elder-care, recipes, early mid-life revelations (a.k.a. navel-gazing), and homeschooling my peanut-allergic child. I began to tinker further with other social media platforms, too. Then, in 2011, a friend invited to me to Pinterest. I ignored the invi...

Authors wanting to write about a major life upheaval in their life must decide the best way to do so—write a memoir, or fictionalize aspects of the story and instead write a novel based on true events. The first offers the chance to unsettle readers with naked fact; the second allows you to maximize the story’s impact along a certain premise. Either way, you endeavor to write an engaging story that ultimately arrives at the truth about life and human nature. After years of waffling on this front I’ve made a decision that delivered me right to the doorstep of my second traditional book deal! As I wrote in a previous countdown post , this summer I’ve been putting together a couple of novel proposals. I’d been working on shaping my second novel since April, writing then boiling down an extended synopsis and polishing the first fifty pages until my agent said, “I love it.” Hoping that love could carry us into a two-book deal, she asked about a third project. I did have a story...