Julie's Big News

By Pamela

Kim, Julie, Pamela, Elizabeth, Joan and Susan

Last November at our writing retreat five of us sat at the long wooden dining room table and listened as Julie read to us the unfolding love story of Isabelle and Robert. Back then she called it All the Things You Are, inspired by the popular song of that era when the story takes place.

Over the next few months, her story would grow and change, new titles would be batted around for us to test drive, and we hungrily waited for the first-final draft to show up in our inboxes. I remember the night I finished her story, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I texted Julie even though it was well past midnight. (She's a night owl and I knew she'd be up.) I can't remember what I wrote exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of: You've done it! This is the one! I knew it. We all knew it.

This summer, finally satisfied that her revisions were complete, Julie sent out query letters to a few agents and received a request for the full and from her 'dream agent' Elisabeth Weed and later signed with Weed Literary to represent her story, now titled: Calling Me Home.

For the past two weeks, Julie has been sharing news with us regarding the overwhelming response to her story from people outside our circle of six who have echoed our sentiments. I've seen Julie vacillate between disbelief and shock and finally joy with a healthy dose of gratitude.

Today we're able to share with you what we've been dying to shout from the rooftops across north Texas.

Julie has a book deal!

From today's Publisher's Marketplace, the Deal of the Day:

Fiction: Debut: Julie Kibler's CALLING ME HOME, in which an 89-year-old recounts the story of her forbidden relationship with the black son of her family's housekeeper and its tragic consequences in 1930s Kentucky, as she travels cross-country to a funeral with her dear friend, a young black hairstylist with family troubles of her own, to Hilary Rubin Teeman at St. Martin's, at auction, for publication in 2013, by Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary (US/CAN/OM).

elisabeth@weedliterary.com

Foreign rights: to Jenny Geras at Pan Macmillan in a pre-empt, to Piper in Germany, to Belfond in France, to Aschehoug in Norway, to Artemis in Holland, to Novo Conceito in Brazil by Jenny Meyer at Jenny Meyer Literary Agency on behalf of Elisabeth Weed.