I loved New York

One of our first views of the madness
that is Times Square

By Julie

Still do!

I had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of visiting New York City for the first time last week. While I was making my plans and travel arrangements, I griped to Susan about how expensive things were-mostly, hotel rooms. She advised me I'd be ready to come home after four days, and not to worry about staying much longer.

Well, she was wrong. :) (And I still love her, too.)

We stayed five, and I honestly believe I could have stayed another week and been perfectly content had my children and dogs not been needing me.

I think I'm just a city girl at heart (most of my growing up years were spent in inner-city Denver), and the hustle and bustle don't bother me as long as I have a quiet room to collapse in at night.

My husband grinning in disbelief at the
sheer amount of food delivered to our table
at Junior's

The overarching purpose of my visit was to meet with my publishers and agents, of course, but we tacked on a few days for fun, and my husband and I had a blast.

We skipped many of the traditional touristy activities, figuring we will enjoy those with our daughters when we return one day, and mostly wandered and ate. I have five extra pounds to prove that all the extra walking doesn't negate all the extra calories. Yes--five pounds in five days.

A woman naming her price at a market
in Chinatown

We did visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and the 9/11 memorial, but we also went on a walking tour of a predominately Chassidic Jewish neighborhood (Crown Heights), emerged from a subway ride to be unexpectedly dazed by the street festival of San Genarro in Little Italy, observed clusters of folks playing and betting on card and mahjong games in Columbus Park in China Town, rode the escalators up and down all eight floors of Saks Fifth Avenue, contemplated a scavenger hunt in the main New York Public Library to take photos of all my author friends' books (unfortunately, they closed too soon), ate black and white cookies whenever we came across them for comparison's sake, and watched Once, a musical based on our family's favorite movie, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on Broadway. And that's just scratching the surface. And while it's true we did see a few rats in the subway tunnels, we didn't experience a single "rude New Yorker" in our whole time there (except one irate usher in the theater when my husband attempted to check us in on Facebook before the show ever started …).

Me with my St. Martin's Press editor,
Hilary Teeman. Together, we demonstrate
the true range from short to tall. 

We usually purchase an extended-day pass for public transportation wherever we travel as we find this the best way to get our bearings and really learn a place. We love the challenge of finding the best subway route to get us from point A to point B and the thrill of running up or down stairs to find the right platform in time to catch the next train.

With my literary agent, Elisabeth Weed, and my foreign rights
agent,  Jenny Meyer

I might have taken my love affair with the subway a little too seriously this time when I decided to ride one to and from my appointments with my editor and agents instead of hailing a cab. But in my mind, hailing a cab seemed more intimidating than catching a train. As a result, I returned to the hotel nearly in tears because my feet, crowded in dress shoes, which I rarely wear, almost didn't make it. I walked less that day that any other, but feet used to flip flops and athletic shoes don't do well walking any distance at all. When I saw a sign in the subway station that said, "Call here for customer assistance," I almost picked up the phone and said, "Can someone please come carry me?"

The Flatiron Building, where
St. Martin's Press is
headquartered.

Nonetheless, the meetings with my editor and the rest of the staff at St. Martin's Press, my literary agent and foreign rights agent, and my film agent were all more fun than I could have imagined. I learned a lot, and it was exciting to hear about the marketing and publicity visions each of these folks shared in person, face-to-face. I believe Calling Me Home couldn't have landed in better hands.

Hope you'll enjoy a few photos I took on the trip, and stay tuned for more news coming up in the next few weeks--one thing I think you'll find especially surprising and exciting!

The long and completely true story of how Julie found her dream agent!

By Julie

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d been offered representation, but decided to let it settle around me for a while before I talked about it here on the blog. I wanted to be sure my priorities were in order, and my last full post came from that place. It’s still true; so much in life is more important than landing the right agent.

But you know what? It’s still pretty darn cool. So now I’m talking about it. It's a long post—I hope you'll bear with me!

As an unagented writer, I spent hours poring over search results, combing the blogosphere for stories about writers and their agents. On the one hand, it was a great way to research the process—to discover why authors queried certain agents, how long it took to find an agent, how many queries they sent before getting “the call,” what kinds of questions they asked before signing the contract, and so on. On the other hand, these posts were like little pep talks. When I read success stories—especially from authors I know—I got butterflies in my stomach. Realizing dreams, it seemed, wasn’t an impossibility.

I got that feeling when I read Therese Walsh’s post on the fabulous Writer Unboxed blog: “Home Run! Therese Finds her Perfect Agent!” back in the fall of 2008. I’d only just begun compiling a list of agents to query with my last manuscript. (Yes, there were others, may they rest in peace. It was my first to query.) I’d known Teri a while online. We’d both taken classes from the same amazing author (Barbara Samuel O’Neal), were in some of the same online forums, and eventually clicked to become Facebook friends. I admired Teri’s determination and attitude and absolute transparency when it came to her writing journey. Her character alone was a recommendation for her agent, but I also liked what I saw on Elisabeth’s website—who she’d chosen to represent and what kinds of books they were writing. So I added Elisabeth Weed’s name to my query list, dreaming of the day when I’d finally send my first letter out.

In May 2009, I sent my first query to the agent at the top of my list—Elisabeth Weed. I sent two more, just to be on the safe side. (Ha!) Imagine my excitement when I opened my inbox the next day to receive a request for the first fifty pages of my manuscript from Elisabeth. I was beside myself, and after the emails flew among my fellow What Women Write ladies, I jotted a quick note to Teri, telling her I’d received a request and if the time came, would she mind me picking her brain about Elisabeth. “Woot! Julie, that’s awesome! Of course, send any questions along as things progress. Elisabeth is terrific. Good luck!” (Facebook is so sweet to keep all these conversations for so long … and kind of creepy, too.)

Now imagine my dismay when my first rejection also came from Elisabeth Weed—and one of the nicest I received. I knew there would be many more before it was all over. I’d queried other agents in the interim, of course, and kept doing so for several more months while another story began tugging at my heart. I didn’t query a huge number of agents—maybe twenty five in all. I received a decent number of partial requests and one full, but each was followed by another rejection. I was already getting a sense that maybe it wasn’t “the one.” While I loved the story, and the characters lived on in my mind and heart (still do!), I suspected it wasn’t where I was supposed to be as a writer. It was trying too hard to be like another author I loved (waving at Jodi Picoult, as if she’ll ever read this!). It was time to move on. I’d been attempting to write a new story in the same niche while I queried, but after nearly fifty thousand words, I put it aside as well.

That other story, the one that started tugging at my heart early on, just wouldn’t let me go. I’d learned a surprising bit of family lore from my father. One line, basically, with no more hints of what happened: As a teen, my grandmother had fallen deeply in love with a young black man, and their families ripped them apart. It was all he knew, and none of the involved parties were living, so it’s all I’ll ever know. But it wouldn’t let me go. I began to imagine what might have been. I selected a setting and time period, slightly different from when and where my grandmother lived, but perfect for my story, did a lot of research on the area, laws, time periods, and anything else written on the subject. In April 2010, I wrote the first 30 thousand words or so during a Backspace writing marathon. Over the next several months, I added another 45 thousand, and in November, I did my own version of NaNoWriMo (NaNoFiMo: National Novel Finishing Month!), to write the final 30 thousand words.

I mostly ignored the file over the holidays, then pulled it out to begin revising in earnest after the New Year. I began setting my beta readers upon it (I picture them like a school of beta fish going after their dinner) in mid-February. After the critique of my marvelous group, some non-writers, and several more months of fiddling with the thing, I finally decided it was time to query. I ran my query letter by my critique group a few hundred times, and also by my trusty fellow Backspacers, who poked and prodded at it gently and graciously.

I sent a few queries at the end of June, but this time I didn’t query Elisabeth first. I wanted to be sure my query letter was effective. I didn’t want to waste an opportunity. Because she was still at the top of my list. I received a request for a partial from another agent immediately, and was thrilled, but by then, the last few members of What Women Write had read and critiqued CALLING ME HOME and I realized I had a little more work to do. I was relieved I hadn’t sent more queries or partials into the ether.

A couple of weeks and some hard revisions later, I was ready to query again. This time, late Thursday, July 14, I sent my first letter to Elisabeth. I sent a few more a few hours later, just to be on the safe side. (Is this sounding like the movie Groundhog Day? It kind of is. Keep reading!)

Imagine my excitement when I received a request Monday afternoon for a partial from Stephanie Sun, Elisabeth’s delightful assistant (who is now building her own list!), on Elisabeth’s behalf. I hadn’t said anything to my group, wanting to query under the radar for a bit, but of course I couldn’t contain my excitement and the emails started flying. I sent a note to Teri—shocked to find my old note floated back up in Facebook, reminding me exactly when I’d messaged about the last time I’d queried!—and I said something much the same, but perhaps not quite as confident as when I was a brand new querier the first time around. “AWESOME!!” Teri wrote. “I’ll put in a good word for you and cross my fingers!” She suggested a relaxing glass of wine, though within a day or two I said I probably needed to upgrade to Jack Daniels. (If you know me at all, this should make you laugh pretty hard—Julie doesn’t do alcohol very well at all. I stuck with wine and not much of it.)

The next day, I received another email, this time from Elisabeth herself. “I just read the first three chapters of Calling Me Home and think they are terrific! Will you send me the rest? I can't wait to see how this love story unfolds.”

O.M.G. Let me think about that ... OF COURSE I WILL! I sent it off late that night after madly making sure all my i‘s were dotted and t’s were crossed. (I emailed Teri: “What did you tell her? That I can perform miracles?” Teri responded that she had her toes crossed, too, now.)

The next day, Wednesday, I received a note from another published friend who has been an incredible mentor to me over the years. She’d asked if she could read my manuscript a few weeks earlier. Her note said she loved it and wanted to recommend it on to her agent with my permission. WHAT?! I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t sleeping or eating much by then. Her agent agreed to read the full manuscript and I sent it off that day.

I wasn’t sure how to handle this with Elisabeth. I’d heard it was polite to send other agents a note when other agents had your full manuscript. Others said only to nudge if you’d received an offer of representation. I was conflicted. I asked Teri what she thought, and she said it couldn’t hurt to let Elisabeth know.

I think the new request was providence.

I contacted Elisabeth, and it turned out she hadn’t received my full manuscript for some reason. “I'm so glad you emailed. I requested the rest of your ms yesterday and hadn't heard back from you. Clearly you didn't get it. Please send so I can read the rest. I'm loving it!” Then, later: “I am so glad you emailed again as I was seriously refreshing my email, hoping I had this to read tonight!”

Needless to say, I was allowing myself to hope at this point. Just a little. But trying to keep my cool.

To make a short story long … I received another email from Elisabeth the next Tuesday: “Dear Julie, I literally just finished reading this at my desk! Thank you so much for sending Calling Me Home my way. I loved it!” and later, after she commented more on the story and some revisions she anticipated it needed, “I am having Stephanie, my trusted colleague read alongside me and was hoping you and I could find some time to talk. Are you around tomorrow or Thursday?”

Was I around the next two days? Of course I was. And was this … The Call?

I was dying from anticipation. It felt like it was going to be The Call. But I wasn’t going to count my chickens before they hatched.

I emailed Teri, “Note from Elisabeth today saying she loved my manuscript and wants to speak by phone call tomorrow or Thursday! Good sign, yes?!?!”

Teri: “Oh, this makes me soooo happy! Yes, a very good sign.”

Turns out that stinker already knew Elisabeth was going to offer representation, but she was gracious enough to let me hear the words from Elisabeth herself the next day: “In case it’s not clear, I’m calling to offer you representation.”

So on Wednesday, July 29, We spent more than an hour on the phone, discussing my manuscript, how she saw it positioned in the marketplace, how she typically worked with clients, and so on. By the time we finished talking, I’d ticked all the questions off my “things to ask potential agent” list without even having to ask most of them. And though the majority of articles you read about considering offers of representation say to thank the agent and tell her you’ll get back to her after you’d have a chance to consider, and to notify any other agents reading your manuscript, I had a gut feeling. I told her, “I’m just going to go ahead and say now that I feel good about this. You’ve been my top pick from the day I sent my first query two years ago, you’ve answered all my questions, and I can’t see any reason not to say yes today.”

After we disconnected, my daughter, my wonderful, wise girl who got the first post after this experience, said, “You just sounded like you were talking to one of your writer friends.”

It was more confirmation I’d made the right decision. I sent a note to the other agent who had my full, letting her know that while I appreciated her offer to read and admired her for doing such a truly fabulous job for my friend, I believed I was making the right decision in accepting Elisabeth’s offer. She was gracious and full of good wishes.

So here I am, a month or so later, an agented author. August is no-man’s land in the publishing world, so we’ve taken that time to fine tune my manuscript. I’ve completed two sets of revisions and it sounds like we’re on target for Elisabeth to start submitting to editors soon! I can’t wait to see what happens next.

I hope you’ll take this post as I did all those times I read about The Call—as a few words to the wise, and a reason to keep following your dreams.

Most of all, I want to take a moment to thank some dear friends who helped make this the exciting and relatively painless process it was this time around. Therese Walsh, author extraordinaire of The Last Will of Moira Leahy and creator of Writer Unboxed. And my other friend—the fabulous multi-published Diane Chamberlain. (Both of them have been our special guests on What Women Write, here and here.) And of course, my amazing group of women right here at What Women Write. (And my BFF Gail, who is not yet a writer, but is determined I’ll need a personal assistant ASAP.) This kind of feels like an academy awards speech, so I’m stopping there for now.

But this only reinforces what I’ve known for a few years now. The writing community isn’t a tank full of sharks, circling to devour one another (well, maybe there are a few sharks, but I haven’t run across any yet). It’s a community of friends who look out for each other and help each other along the way. I hope I’ll always remember to pay it forward.

P.S. That picture up there--it's my two girls. That picture was taken the evening of the afternoon I got The Call. They were NOT at our house, and I have no idea what they celebrating, but I like how they do it!

Hot off the presses: Debut Author Therese Walsh!

By Julie

Today we welcome Therese Walsh to What Women Write. It's a big day for Therese — release day for her debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy! We're delighted to share in Therese's special day of celebration.

Therese is a cofounder of the blog WriterUnboxed.com. She lives in upstate New York, with her husband, two children, a cat and a bouncy Jack Russell named Kismet.

From Therese:
The Last Will of Moira Leahy is a women’s fiction novel that borrows liberally from other genres: mystery, psychological suspense, family saga, romance and mythical realism. It’s about a woman who lost her identical twin — and a large portion of herself — about a decade ago, but reconnects with her former life after purchasing an artifact from her past. Through interwoven narratives, we see Maeve Leahy as she was and what led to the tragedy with her sister, Moira; and we travel with her in the present day as she unravels the truth about the artifact — who's following her and leaving her notes. We see her transform as, little by little, layers of her past are peeled away and the course of her future is forever altered.

www: I've known Therese online for several years through Writer Unboxed, Barbara Samuel's forums, and other social networking sites, and I really couldn't be happier for her. I'm thrilled she agreed to have a conversation with me for What Women Write.

Welcome, Therese! I love your title. I also loved UNBOUNDED, your working title, but The Last Will of Moira Leahy grew on me. I have my own hypothesis, but how do you pronounce Moira Leahy? Moy-ruh Lay-hee? Mwah-ra Lee-hee? And precisely how nuts will you go if someone else mispronounces it, say, when introducing you at an author event?

Thanks for having me, Julie. Thanks, too, for your compliment on the title. Your first guess at pronunciation is correct! If the title is mispronounced, I promise not to go nuts — though I will have a keris nearby for many of these events, so maybe people will be very careful not to mispronounce?

www: Friends, you've been warned: Tread carefully and carry a bigger keris!

Therese, The Last Will of Moira Leahy is an unusual blend of genres. To help us place it on our mental bookshelves, what other books might you compare it to, classic or recent?

Oh, boy. If I’d had an answer to this, my query-writing process would’ve been a whole lot easier. Louise Erdrich wrote a book called The Painted Drum and used myth to help unfurl the narrative as I’ve done, but her novel is quite literary. My agent wrote this in her pitch to editors:

“Part psychological suspense, part love story, (The Last Will of Moira Leahy) will appeal to readers of Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child and Jennifer Egan’s The Keep.”

I like to say that Last Will is women’s fiction that borrows liberally from other genres and leave people curious for more.

www: I'm curious! I've read the excerpt you made available on your Web site, and I'm buying my own copy today, as soon as I can get over to my local bookseller.

So, the main characters in Last Will are twins – one living and one her deceased twin sister. Why tell your story from the perspective of twins? How did you conduct your research into this aspect of the story and the special bond many sets of sisters, especially twins, seem to share?

When I first started to write Last Will, waaay back in 2002, Maeve did not have a twin. But one day, Moira was just there, explaining Maeve’s behaviors and trauma. When I scrapped version one of the manuscript and began version two in 2005 (and version three in ’06), I knew the story had to be structured around these two women. It took a while for me to realize I could tell Moira’s tale through detailed Out of Time sequences — not flashbacks, but an actual narrative from the past that wove in and out of Maeve’s present-day story, a la The English Patient.

There are so many terrific books available about twins, but the one I liked best was a small paperback by Susan Kohl called Twin Stories, for its rich first-hand accounts of twin phenomena.

www: I love when that happens — when you think you've got it all figured out, or you've given up on ever figuring it out, and then voila!, the characters lead you.

And speaking of characters, the Javanese keris plays a special role in Last Will. I'm venturing a guess: the keris could be considered a character on its own, much in the way setting becomes character in many stories (perhaps even in Last Will?).

You’re right, and the truth is that the keris dictated the course of this story more than any character.

www: How did you learn about the keris and why did you choose to include this unusual element in your story? Did its significance change or expand over time while you were writing Last Will?

Its role in the story absolutely expanded over time. I found the keris almost by fluke. When I first started writing adult fiction, I planned a simple love story — girl + guy + peach pie = happiness. The guy was an antiques dealer. I spent many happy hours going through eBay listings, looking for antiques. One of the items I found was an antique Javanese keris — a dagger with a wavy blade. It looked interesting, so I added it to my list. I wanted my first scene to take place in an auction house and wasn’t sure which item should draw my characters’ attention. I chose the keris from my list without much thought.

I gave my scene to a friend, who read it with interest, then asked if the keris would be important to the rest of the book. It sounded like a good idea. I dug in, did some research, and realized the keris was so much more than a pretty blade. Maeve Leahy, the main character, realizes the same throughout the course of the novel. Here’s an outtake from the book, a scene between Maeve and a friend who knows a lot about this particular item:

"Kerises may well be manufactured by machine nowadays,” Garrick said, “but it used to be that empus made them, layering metals to create perfect patterns by following something like a blueprint. Each design was supposed to bring the owner a specific gift — like wealth or inner strength. But sometimes the empu would allow the blade to be made however it wanted to be made. When that happened, it was said the gods had a hand in crafting the keris because they had plans for it. Your keris,” he said, “is fated.”

www: (You noticed the pretty blue font to complement the cover art, right?) I'm curious, though — even though the keris plays such a large role, the story takes place in Castine, Maine, and Rome, Italy, but not Java, correct? This fascinated me as I read prepublication pieces or posts you wrote for Writer Unboxed, but I was also slightly puzzled. Without too much spoiling, can you hint at whether there's a tie between Java and the other two locations?

Correct. Javanese culture is a big part of this book, through one character in particular. Readers will meet that character in time.

www: It took a lot of years for the published version of Last Will to come to fruition. Many of our readers and What Women Write bloggers have been laboring for years to get our stories into the hands of the right agents and editors, too — some certainly not as long as you did, and some, I suspect, even longer. I admire your "sticktuitiveness." In fact, if I chose one word to sum up what I know about Therese Walsh right now, it would be persistence.

Aww, thanks.

www: Therese, how did you cope? Was there a point when you felt you might give up, or did you even throw in the towel for a period, but then summon up a new reserve of energy to try again? How do you think the process affected your reaction when you finally received "the calls" from Elisabeth Weed, your agent — first, with her offer of representation, and second, with news of your sale?

I thought about giving up regularly after the first version of the story — the guy + girl + peach pie version — failed with agents. Not only did it fail with agents, but one agent suggested I’d written the story in the wrong genre and should be writing women’s fiction. I felt defeated and exhausted at the prospect of reworking the story, even though I knew that agent was right.

I took a prolonged break. The timeline is a little fuzzy, but 2004 was a big year for mulling over what I wanted to do next. I’d been working on a new project, but when Unbounded (now Last Will) failed, I lost enthusiasm for that new project — probably because the old project writhed in the “unfinished business” category of my mind. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, a lot of craft work. I salvaged one critical scene from the old draft and started over again in 2005. Then I scrapped everything again in 2006 and started over for a third time.

Maybe I would’ve quit but my characters refused to leave me alone. You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, that disquiet you feel when you know something needs to be done and it’s important and you’re messing up? That’s how I felt whenever I wasn’t working on this project. When I was at least actively thinking about it, the anxiety eased. And so, little by little, I worked through the last draft.

When Elisabeth offered to represent this book, I was thrilled, hopeful. And maybe it was because the road had been so long, but when the deal came through — even though it was like someone holding up a big neon sign that said, “Congratulations, you’ve made it!” — it took a while for me to process it.

www: Thank you for being so frank. I think your words here may act as a balm and a beacon of hope for many of us. Never give up, right?

But now, something less serious. We've heard cover horror stories and witnessed some of those horrors limp painfully, unapologetically to print. BUT ... the cover for Last Will is without doubt one of the most breathtaking I've seen. I heard about your book months in advance. I've been anticipating it. But even if I hadn't, I believe this cover would produce an almost audible siren call for me in a bookstore. (Seriously! I love this cover that much. Am I gushing?)

Was this the first option your publisher offered? What was your reaction when you saw the gorgeous rendering of your story from an artist's viewpoint? How far away could they hear you scream? I'm pretty sure had it been mine, it would have been the scream heard around the world, but maybe you have a different take on it.

Thank you! I love my cover, too, and feel very lucky to have it. Here’s what’s cool: That scene I mentioned salvaging from version one of the story? That was the heart of the book for me, and that is what’s represented on the cover of the novel. I didn’t scream, but I felt choked up when I opened the PDF file. It was the first option offered, and obviously we were all thrilled with it.

www: And again, for our readers who are also aspiring writers, what do you believe is the singularly best thing you did for yourself along the way to becoming a published author?

Wow, this is a good and tough question. Why aren’t I asking this question at Writer Unboxed? (Makes a note.) I think the answer is networking, which for me involved reaching out to other writers for critique and establishing Writer Unboxed with Kathleen Bolton.

Yes, you can write in an isolated environment, but — especially for new authors — why would you want to? It’s true that not all critique will be helpful and some may even be harmful, but hearing how others digest your work can guide you along the path to publication if you’re listening with your gut as well as your head (and never your pride). And I could never fully list the ways Writer Unboxed has helped me along the way — the people I’ve met, the things I’ve learned. The blog is sometimes exhausting but it always gives back.

www: I can vouch for Writer Unboxed as an invaluable resource. It's been on my go-to list for nearly as long as I've been reading blogs. And by the way, Writer's Digest named it of the 101 Best Websites for Writers in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Current contributors include uber-agent Donald Maass and one of my other favorite authors, Barbara Samuel/O'Neal. Readers, check it out!

Therese, besides the obvious – your dream of publication coming true – what do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

I have two great kids who make me proud and make me laugh and make me glad to be alive every single day. But, sure, this book is right up there with my two best shining living accomplishments.

www: And who is Teri, as you're more commonly called, in the moments when you're not wearing the admittedly fabulous hat of Therese Walsh, debut author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy?

Who is Teri? Well, she likes laughing more than anything, even chocolate (I know! Gasp!). She thinks Richard Simmons’ guest appearance on Whose Line is it Anyway has to be one of the funniest things in the world, right up there with Chris Farley’s SNL skit as motivational speaker Matt Foley. She dances, badly, in the kitchen with her kids, cheers loudly at their swim meets and soccer games; and goes — occasionally — to her husband’s Irish-band gigs (but not too often lest she be pulled from the audience to sing the un-Irishy Homeward Bound or The Boxer with him). She likes dressing up in medieval clothing for her local choir’s Twelfth Night event and braiding her hair crazily for that night. She’s a bit of a foodie; she would drive long miles for fabulous feasting.

www: Hey, I think I'd like to hang out with that Teri in real life. (I'd go hear the band, too, by the way! Just sayin'.)

I have one final question: How are you going to celebrate book release day?

(THAT'S TODAY, BY THE WAY!) (!!)

I have a book talk/reading/signing planned for a nearby Barnes & Noble — very excited about that! After, a bunch of us are going to one of my favorite eateries so we can gobble bacon-wrapped BBQ shrimp and drink chocolate martinis. But after reading Adrienne Crezo’s story about chocolatinis via Twitter (@a_crezo), I know to be careful.

www: This interview has been beyond a blast, Therese. Thank you so much for visiting with us at What Women Write, and we wish you only the best.

Today, Therese Walsh, debut author. Next week, New York Times Bestselling Author Therese Walsh?

Wouldn't surprise me. Nope, not one bit.

Visit Therese at her Web site, where you may read an excerpt. (But I just dare you to visit this beautiful site and not immediately run out to buy this book!)