Reader FAQ

How did you meet your editor?

Well, a coffee date at the RT Booklovers Convention with Avon editor May Chen turned into a book deal!

It’s a well known fact that I adore Lisa Marie Rice’s books. I knew May Chen is her editor, and May is on Twitter and she’s incredibly sweet, chatty and approachable, so I emailed her, and was all ballsy, and begged her to send me an ARC of Lisa Marie Rice’s upcoming book.

She was nice enough to send it to me and then months later when it was time for the next book, I emailed her again and asked very nicely if I could have the ARC of that book. She sent it to me and then asked if I’d be willing to give Lisa Marie Rice a quote which I happily supplied because, again, I love her books.

In March 2013, May emailed me and said, “Hey, I see you’re going to be at RT this year. So am I. I’d love to buy you a coffee as a thank you for the quote you gave Lisa and we could dish books,” (because many of our emails turned into book dish fests as we talked about books we loved or didn’t love lol) Of course I said sure because I love dishing books!

So we met in the lobby of the hotel and I was thinking this would be like a twenty minute chat at most. An hour and a half later we were still talking and we covered a variety of topics. She told me how much she loved RUSH and FEVER, and asked me for an ARC of BURN, and then we started talking about storylines that I had on the back burner but had never had time to write, and I told her about this idea that I’ve literally had for years that I would love to be able to write but didn’t see an opportunity any time soon since my schedule is so crazy.

After I told her about the idea she was like, “OMG I LOVE that idea you have to write it for me!” And I was like yeah yeah whatever lol. I didn’t think anything about it but at the end of the conversation she says well go home and talk it over with your agent and let me know.

Picture me with a deer in the headlights look.

So I go home and never gave it another thoughts. Didn’t mention it to my agent because again, I expected nothing to come of this whatsoever. Well, the day after I got home, May emails me and says, “hey, did you talk over your idea with your agent?”

At this point I hit the panic button and I forwarded her email to my agent and said, “OMG what do I tell her?” And then I said, “I did not commit to anything and what do I do now?”

My agent said, “Don’t worry about it. Just email her back, say how nice it was talking to her at RT and if she has any questions she can contact me.”

So I did as my agent said and then promptly put it out of my mind again.

Until the next day when my agent emails me with the subject line of HOLY FUCK (seriously haha) and she then said that May Chen had just called her wanting to talk about a book deal for the idea we’d discussed at RT.

Uhmmm okaaay. Not exactly what I was expecting. Because in reality this sort of thing happens a lot as in an editor will approach my agent about wanting to work with me but nothing ever comes of it.

May Chen has some balls, y’all! Haha. She totally made this deal happen. My agent and I were both flabbergasted over how this came about and how hard May worked to make this deal happen.

So by the end of May (the month lol) we had a deal in place for three books and a new series with Avon Books and May Chen is my editor. Wow!

And all because I had coffee to dish books at the RT convention. So you never know when an innocuous meeting will turn into a book deal!

share on: